What Does the Future Hold for PRM?
P.J. Jakovljevic - March 6, 2004

Current State of PRM Vendors

What are the advantages of partner relationship management (PRM) applications and can they be sustained stand-alone? Designed to help manufacturers reach end users served by an intermediary, PRM software lets original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) grasp feedback from end customers, while also supporting commerce and interactions with distributors. Then the natural question is why only a few software vendors specializing in PRM, which is also known as channel management, demand chain management (DCM) or channel relationship management (ChRM), have thrived? Part of the answer is that expectations for PRM were overblown during the business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce software frenzy of a few years ago, leading to an overabundance of specialty vendors. But another factor is that PRM functions increasingly overlap with, and are being subsumed by the market for customer relationship management (CRM) and supply chain management (SCM) software, as the goal is to make manufacturers more responsive to customers’ demands for their products so that manufactures can deliver products in a more timely manner...