Market Perspectives

ISG Research is happy to share insights gleaned from our latest Buyers Guide, an assessment of how well software providers’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The CRM Partners: ISG Research Buyers Guide is the distillation of a year of market and product research by ISG Research. This research is part of a portfolio of ISG Buyers Guides in CRM covering marketing, sales, customer service, platform, digital commerce and sales engagement.

Partner relationship management (PRM) helps enterprises support the processes that ensure contracted partners that market, sell and even service are managed in the most effective manner possible. An enterprise’s ability to manage the extension of its business to a third-party is best handled with a dedicated application that can interoperate with other CRM applications and platforms through which it can share data and information about its products and services.

ISG defines CRM Partners as the applications that support PRM processes and tasks across leaders, managers, and relationship marketing and sales professionals. The applications should be able to orchestrate the workflow and sharing of data from the enterprise to partners. Management and operations with partners span many departments across the front office of an enterprise including marketing, selling, service, the partner team and accounting where payments are exchanged. This requirement for PRM to support more than just selling is critical and should be part of any investment into systems that can support the broader set of processes and teams.

An important aspect within CRM and the channel ecosystem is the role of partners, often overlooked but critical in many industries where business transactions flow through resellers or distributors. One fundamental issue in the partner-distributor model is determining who owns the customer. Traditionally, the partner or distributor owns the customer, which can frustrate manufacturers. However, modern partner systems foster a more symbiotic relationship between the originator (manufacturer) and the reseller. Both parties share a mutual interest in understanding the customer, thereby benefiting from shared information.

By utilizing customer information, modern partner systems enable both manufacturers and distributors to better meet customer needs. This creates a win-win situation, benefiting both the manufacturer and the distributor.

A well-designed partnership relationship system within CRM can significantly enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of both originators and partners. Effective partnership systems create a win-win situation for both the originator and the partner by providing access to customer information and insights. For instance, if the originator has 300 partners, they can analyze patterns and identify successful product combinations. This valuable information can then be shared among all partners, allowing them to benefit from the collective knowledge and experiences of the originator, who interacts with numerous resellers.

By sharing these insights, each partner can become more efficient and effective in dealing with customers. Access to customer data allows partners to better understand customer behavior and preferences. For example, if the data shows that customers who purchase a specific product are likely to be interested in another related product six months later, partners can use this information to tailor their sales strategies. This benefits both the originator, by increasing sales, and the partners, by improving their customer engagement and sales outcomes.

The evolution of PRM technology within CRM is being challenged by dedicated software providers who focus exclusively on the management and operation of partner channels. Through 2026, a new generation of partner management applications for onboarding, SLA management, and origination and partner payments will replace existing ones that only focus on indirect channel selling. One of the most challenging aspects in managing partners across a channel is the ability to define and track mutually allocated investments called market development funds (MDF) to their expected outcomes. While many CRM systems can now provide shared access to customers and selling processes, the requirements for PRM traditionally go much further and are managed by processes and teams across marketing to customer service.

The ISG Buyers Guide™ for CRM Partners evaluates software providers and products in key areas such in the management and operations of partner marketing, selling and service that is in adherence to agreements. Also assessed was support for business collaboration, sales and pipeline management, roles and preferences, integration with other systems and investment. The research only evaluated PRM systems enabled within a CRM platform and its suite of supporting applications.

This research evaluates the following software providers that offer products that address key elements of CRM partners as we define it: HubSpot, Microsoft, NetSuite, Oracle, Salesforce, SugarCRM and Zoho.

This research-based index evaluates the full business and information technology value of CRM partners software offerings. We encourage you to learn more about our Buyers Guide and its effectiveness as a provider selection and RFI/RFP tool.

We urge organizations to do a thorough job of evaluating CRM partners offerings in this Buyers Guide as both the results of our in-depth analysis of these software providers and as an evaluation methodology. The Buyers Guide can be used to evaluate existing suppliers, plus provides evaluation criteria for new projects. Using it can shorten the cycle time for an RFP and the definition of an RFI.

The Buyers Guide for CRM Partners in 2024 finds Salesforce first on the list, followed by Oracle and HubSpot.

Software providers that rated in the top three of any category ﹘ including the product and customer experience dimensions ﹘ earn the designation of Leader.

The Leaders in Product Experience are:

• Oracle
• Salesforce
• HubSpot

The Leaders in Customer Experience are:

• Salesforce
• HubSpot
• Oracle

The Leaders across any of the seven categories are:

• Salesforce, which has achieved this rating in seven of the seven categories.
• Oracle in six categories.
• HubSpot in five categories.
• Zoho in two categories.
• Microsoft in one category.

The overall performance chart provides a visual representation of how providers rate across product and customer experience. Software providers with products scoring higher in a weighted rating of the five product experience categories place farther to the right. The combination of ratings for the two customer experience categories determines their placement on the vertical axis. As a result, providers that place closer to the upper-right are “exemplary” and rated higher than those closer to the lower-left and identified as providers of “merit.” Software providers that excelled at customer experience over product experience have an “assurance” rating, and those excelling instead in product experience have an “innovative” rating.

Note that close provider scores should not be taken to imply that the packages evaluated are functionally identical or equally well-suited for use by every enterprise or process. Although there is a high degree of commonality in how organizations handle CRM partners there are many idiosyncrasies and differences that can make one provider’s offering a better fit than another.

ISG Research has made every effort to encompass in this Buyers Guide the overall product and customer experience from our CRM partners blueprint, which we believe reflects what a well-crafted RFP should contain. Even so, there may be additional areas that affect which software provider and products best fit an enterprise’s particular requirements. Therefore, while this research is complete as it stands, utilizing it in your own organizational context is critical to ensure that products deliver the highest level of support for your projects.

You can find more details on our community as well as on our expertise in the research for this Buyers Guide.