Proper Partner Program Management Needs a System, Not Just a New Hire

It’s easy to assume that hiring a top-tier partnerships leader = instant partner program management. But in many cases, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Yes, you need a capable leader who can recruit great partner managers, build the right marketing motion, and design a clear vision for growth.

But even the best players need a shared system — a single place to manage data, deals, and communication — and a defined structure for how the program runs.

Just look at any other GTM team. Are they running their programs without a core set of software designed just for them and their day-to-day? Likely not. And partnerships shouldn’t either.

Below, we take a closer look at why partner program management matters, what it entails, and when to start thinking about it.

The Case for Partner Program Management

When most companies start their partner program, they run it manually. At first, keeping track of partner activity in spreadsheets and emails can work, but it gets real untenable real fast. And at enterprise companies, that approach simply can’t fly.

• Deals aren’t handed off properly to partners or sales teams, forcing prospects to rerun through lengthy discovery processes or causing errors on RFPs.
• A lack of approval processes can stall referral payouts and MDF claims, frustrating partners and your finance team.
• Pipeline forecasts become guesswork because the data lives in a dozen different systems.
• When leadership asks for a performance report, your team spends days stitching together metrics from Salesforce, spreadsheets, and shared drives.

Ameer Draidy at design agency Circular Design shared a “near disaster” with deal registration as a result of a disorganized manual process: 

“The moment I knew we had to change was when we nearly paid commission on the same $50,000 deal to two different partners. One had registered it via an email to me, and another had submitted it through a Google Form we were testing. Neither was logged correctly in the master spreadsheet.”

For Daniel Dantus at AI agent platform, Skan AI, the turning point came when the company began scaling globally. 

“We were onboarding 3–4 new partners a week, and our ‘Google Sheet PRM’ just couldn’t keep up. Partners were emailing us asking for updates we couldn’t give in real-time, and internally, it became clear that we had no consistent way to track metrics like influenced revenue or partner health.”

Sure, But What If You Already Have a PRM?

Even if you have a PRM, it might not be set up correctly or have everything you need as your program matures.

At Channeltivity, we’ve seen this story play out hundreds of times.

Prospects come to us having had little success with their partner program, but seem to think that a new hire who “has run partnerships before” will magically turn things around. That’s a lot of pressure to put on one person — and it’s not realistic without the right system behind them.

Eventually, your partner team ends up back where it started: buried in manual tasks. Aaron Howerton, RevOps Architect at GoNimbly, put it well on LinkedIn: 

“Companies struggle with partnerships because they fail to realize that the key to automation is access to structured data. They want to track attribution, but aren’t tracking any of the work that is required to GET to attribution. No program management, no contracts, no foundation to build attribution from.

Many times, they’ve also bought a PRM solution and they’re still struggling to show impact and tell the story of partnerships to their leaders.”

So, what should you be looking for, outside of that mythical “fix everything” hire?

6 Elements of Enterprise Partner Program Management

Effective partner program management mirrors other high-performing GTM teams. It’s built on consistent processes, measurable data, and purpose-built software that supports every stage of the partnership lifecycle.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

1. Centralized Visibility

There needs to be one place where everyone — your team, your partners, even your C-suite execs (though, let’s be real, they’ll never log in) — can access partner data in real time.

As Redditor RIP200712 advises, “Scope out the changes you need in order to track and measure your channel performance. That should be P0.”

Why? Because visibility enhances everyone’s experience:

• Partners want to find their contracts easily, reference their business plans, and know where they stand with their referral, deal, and lead distribution pipelines.
• Your team needs to track those details and see broader activity: who’s logging in, who’s downloading co-branded marketing content, who’s getting certified, who’s requesting MDF, who’s registering deals, and who’s moving up in tier.

That data tells your partner team how to operate. They can funnel even more resources to the partners who are excelling (to push more deals over the finish line) and reach out to the ones who are falling behind to see where they can offer the most help.

• Your leadership gains confidence that the dream partner team they put together is actually putting their money where their mouth is.

How to get it: You can’t do any of this with a basic PRM, let alone a spreadsheet. You need a partner portal that can handle bi-directional syncing with your CRM and with a tool like Zapier that can send and receive PRM data to virtually any other platform in your stack.

“Connection to our CRM was important, but the actual advantage was visibility,” Danilo Coviello at Espresso Translations emphasizes. 

“Our PRM did the ‘under-the-carpet’ work so that the team could concentrate on developing stronger connections rather than pursuing updates. The moment the whole thing resided under one roof, there was a sense of relief in communication and purer reporting.”

2. Strong Data Governance

As your partner program grows, so does the amount of sensitive data you manage, from customer details to deal information to MDF budgets. Having that floating around in spreadsheets that people may upload to ChatGPT or Claude doesn’t scream security.

A Partner Portal with strong data governance can help you keep everything in check.

It defines who can access what (internally and externally) and how information flows between systems. Your partner portal should have native role-based permissions to ensure only the right people can view, download, edit, and delete sensitive information.

How to get it: Look for a PRM with enterprise-grade security and built-in compliance. Think: SOC 2-aligned infrastructure, GDPR compliance for lead distribution, and configurable role-based access control (RBAC) so you can customize permissions by partner type, tier, or region.

3. Scalable Partner Communications

Keeping partners informed shouldn’t depend on someone remembering to send an email. A consistent cadence of updates, incentives, and performance summaries helps partners stay engaged — but only if communication happens where they already are.

The best partner program management systems help you automate communication. They send alerts for unopened leads, expiring MDF requests, or deals that need attention, either from the partner or vendor.

At the very least, it should have self-serve dashboards to show everyone with access to the portal a quick view of what’s happening, where things stand, and what needs follow-up.

How to get it: Find a PRM with prebuilt notifications and reminders you can configure and update yourself. You might also look for a PRM with a Forum module, so that partners can ask questions and learn from each other.

4. Integrated Deal Registration

If your partner and sales teams aren’t looking at the same pipeline, everyone is flying blind. Disconnected tools create data gaps that lead to confusion and lost deals.

We’ve somewhat touched on integrations earlier in Centralized Visibility, but it’s worth doubling down on here. Knowing that deal registrations, referrals, and lead distributions are directly connected to your CRM gives you and your partners peace of mind — everyone (including sales teams and anyone else with access to your CRM) can see what’s registered, what’s approved, and what’s closed.

Everyone works from a single, accurate view of the pipeline.

How to get it: Evaluate PRMs that offer native two-way integrations with your CRM, whether it be Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics, or Zoho. That way, every opportunity stays in sync from registration through close. No duplicate entry, no missing details, no missing updates.

One of our customers, Recorded Future (now a Mastercard company), used our deal registration sync to scale their partner program globally.

“We closed several partner-led deals in just a few months. One of the best things about Channeltivity is that I’m able to pull granular KPIs in just a few seconds,” says Billy Cannon, the Director of the Partner Development Center.

5. Streamlined Onboarding and Enablement

A strong partner program makes it easy for partners to get started and even easier to stay engaged. Without automation, onboarding and enablement quickly become bottlenecks. Partner managers get multiple requests for marketing materials and one-off training calls.

Automated onboarding workflows, self-guided training, and certification modules remove that friction. Partners can learn at their own pace while you track progress, approvals, and performance in one place.

How to get it: A PRM that includes an LMS (or can integrate directly with one) is your best bet. That way, you can build and track onboarding and partner training programs directly inside your portal. Make it easy for them to find that information, too — with short and sweet onboarding emails and links straight to these modules from your portal’s homepage.

6. Marketing Collaboration

When partners can easily access campaign materials, request MDF, and co-brand collateral, they’re more likely to promote your products.

The problem is that, without a dedicated partner portal, marketing collaboration often lives across scattered folders, forms, and emails. A centralized, secure hub solves that, giving partners a single place to find what they need and track results.

How to get it: Assess PRMs that give partners the ability to co-brand your marketing materials and request marketing development funds to further their sales efforts. You should also make sure the portal includes a resource library where partners can watch product videos, pull relevant case studies, and review competitive battlecards.

One of our customers, Black Box, uses Channeltivity’s resource library and co-branded collateral module to refine their marketing strategy.

Per David Isola, Director of Product Marketing, “Seeing what content partners are pulling from the Library tells us a lot — what’s popular, and what we should spend more time creating.”

When Should You Start Thinking About Partner Program Management?

Before you need it. Most teams wait until they’re buried in spreadsheets and partner requests before they start looking for a system. They need enough partners to warrant buying an actual tool, right?

But the thing is, each new partner adds layers of complexity — more leads, more deals, more people touching the process. Without at least some rules of engagement, approval processes, and data tracking (even if it’s manual), that complexity compounds fast.

Getting a PRM a little earlier than you think you need it can pay off big time in the form of:

• Shorter onboarding cycles
• Higher partner engagement rates
• More partner-sourced and influenced revenue
• Greater visibility for leadership and RevOps

Structured program management gives partnership teams the data they need to prove impact, not just promise it. The sooner you start, the better off you’ll be.

The Best Leaders Bet On Systems

Companies building well-run partner ecosystems aren’t adding headcount and hoping for the best. They’re investing in systems that make their people more effective. That’s exactly what Channeltivity was designed to support. It’s got:

• Configurable workflows for different partner types and regions
• Training, certification, and enablement tools to keep partners active
• Straightforward deal registration that keeps sales and partners in sync
• Deep, bidirectional CRM integrations that are easy to manage

It even has global enterprise features like built-in multi-language translation. The best part? You can get up and running almost immediately.

As Recorded Future’s team put it, “Standing up enterprise partner portals can take months, even with multiple resources working on it. The Channeltivity team met all of our security and Salesforce integration requirements in less than 6 weeks — and we only had 2 people working on it on our side.”

Curious about what Channeltivity can do for your partner program?

Book a demo today and find out.