Unlocking Pipeline and a Global Partner Strategy: How Recorded Future Scaled With Channeltivity
"We’ve already 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 revenue KPIs in just a few seconds.”
About Recorded Future
Recorded Future is the world’s largest provider of AI-driven cyber threat intelligence, delivering insights from over a million sources to 1,900+ organizations.
Following its $2.65 billion acquisition by Mastercard, Recorded Future prioritized scalable systems and governance to support its next phase of global growth, starting with a more enterprise-capable partner portal.
The Problem: An Outgrown Legacy Portal
When Recorded Future was still an up-and-coming startup, they decided to build their partner-facing portal on top of their CRM. At the time, it made sense — they were already managing partner account and contact data, making it relatively easy to invite partners to the portal and monitor their activity.
But it wasn’t working in the long term.
For one, it was very difficult to update. It was also missing key training and enablement features. And it wasn’t particularly eye-catching. Billy Cannon, Director of the Partner Development Center at Recorded Future, shares:
“The functionality wasn’t intuitive, and the interface looked bad. We had trouble customizing certain modules or content based on the type of partner. Most importantly, what was being represented wasn’t reflective of partners’ real engagement and the business we were receiving through the program.”
Post-Mastercard acquisition, this legacy system wouldn’t support a 400+ partner ecosystem. To scale, Recorded Future needed a new platform — one that would make the complex requirements of a mature partner program simple.
Finding an Enterprise-Ready PRM
The Recorded Future partner team had used a Channeltivity competitor before building their own portal. And when it didn’t work out, they decided to approach that vendor first. But what followed was a series of unmet commitments and overpromises.
So Billy and his team decided to explore other options. Channeltivity quickly rose to the top because it had:
Enterprise PRM Features
It had all the must-haves Billy and his team were looking for:
- A deep, bidirectional Salesforce integration that was easy to manage
- Support for global features like multi-language translation
- Straightforward deal registration
- Scalable workflows that could be tailored to specific regions and partner types
- Built-in enablement tools and certification capabilities
A Professional Sales Process
But enterprise features weren’t the only feather in Channeltivity’s cap. “I’ve never had such responsiveness and attention from a software vendor before,” Billy emphasizes.
“I felt no pressure whatsoever. It was like, ‘What do you want to see? Let’s do it,’ and they’d show me exactly what I was looking for. Nothing changed throughout the course of the sales conversation.”
Transparent, Module-Based Pricing
For Billy, pricing was a major consideration. Since the Mastercard acquisition, Recorded Future’s partner contact list had exploded. While he had a larger budget as part of a more mature company, paying per license wasn’t ideal.
“We had tens of thousands of contacts in our CRM, and I had no idea of what kind of engagement we were going to have. Tying that to money would be hard to explain to the leadership team.
The fact that Channeltivity could support all the complexity we needed and had module-based pricing was a big relief.”
From Implementation to Millions in Impact
Quick Yet Thorough Implementation
With all the momentum post-acquisition, Billy knew he needed to get some quick wins under his belt, fast. But his past experience told him that might be ambitious.
“Standing up enterprise partner portals can take months, even with multiple resources working on it,” he remarks. Thankfully, Channeltivity has implementation down to a science.
“The 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.”
Major Boost to Pipeline in Months
Being able to show off a polished portal to strategic partners quickly paid off. Just five months after launch, Recorded Future partners have registered hundreds of deals, adding millions to Recorded Future’s pipeline.
“A majority of those registrations are approved deals that are actively being worked. We’ve already closed several partner-led deals in just a few months,” Billy elaborates.
“One of the best things about Channeltivity is that I’m able to pull these granular KPIs in just a few seconds.”
Seamless Salesforce Integration
With all their partner and opportunity data housed in Salesforce, Billy and his team knew they had to find a simple way to connect the two systems. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to demonstrate the value of partner pipeline to their entire organization.
“I was a little stressed about this part,” Billy admits. “The two systems had to be able to map one-to-one, and our instance wasn’t exactly clean. We also ideally would be able to build workflows on top of the integration, and I just wasn’t sure if that was possible.”
But it was — even with Recorded Future’s complex Salesforce triggers, lead routing, and other customizations.
That’s because Channeltivity’s integration is built specifically for enterprise instances of Salesforce, with configurations that go down to the record type level. “One of the big things that stands out to me still about Channeltivity is how easy it is to integrate with Salesforce,” Billy remarks.
“The push and pull is excellent. It’s one of the top reasons we signed and why it continues to make an impression on our leadership team.”
Custom Development for Global Revenue Recognition
As a global company operating across currencies and contract types, Recorded Future needed its PRM to match the complexity of the revenue recognition workflows Billy and his team had built in Salesforce. That meant aligning partner deal registration with native currencies, multi-year terms, and accurate ARR calculations.
Rather than pushing Recorded Future to conform to the tool, Channeltivity’s team adapted. Billy explains:
“We had a very specific requirement for how we calculate ARR based on currency and contract term. Within two weeks, Channeltivity made a custom dev update, and everything worked perfectly. That would’ve been a headache with any other vendor.”
By introducing a simple but powerful fix, Channeltivity eliminated manual calculations, reduced ETL errors, and made Salesforce reporting fully aligned for the first time.
“This was the first time a system actually lined up with our reporting. It fixed a key pipeline issue we’d been trying to solve for months.”
A Built-In LMS and Certifications
Billy and his team knew that enablement would be critical to scaling their partner program, and they needed some way to provide that support. But most PRMs didn’t offer that kind of learning out of the box.
“With other vendors, we had to SSO into another platform just to deliver training. It felt duct-taped together,” Billy says.
“Channeltivity’s built-in LMS is clean, integrated, and just works. The fact that they support SCORM files and have shareable certifications was huge.”
One Platform to Run the Ecosystem
With core partner infrastructure in place, Billy and his team are continuing to transform Channeltivity into their central operating system for channel success.
“The narrative for us is consolidation. We want one platform to orchestrate the entire partner experience, and we want Channeltivity to be the backbone of that strategy.”
Future priorities for Recorded Future (a Mastercard company) include:
- Expanding partner marketing capabilities, including co-branded assets
- Streamlining CMS and content delivery
- Refining enablement and certification journeys
Thanks to Channeltivity’s flexible architecture and responsive team, these goals are already in motion.