- Impartner, one of the fastest-growing Partner Relationship Management (PRM) companies, announced it acquired Amplifinity
Impartner — the fastest-growing Partner Relationship Management (PRM) company — announced it acquired Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Amplifinity. Amplifinity is considered a leader in referral partner management software to help formalize the management of emerging “shadow channel” partners — which are expected to surge in growth over the next 10 years.
And by providing businesses with an intentional versus ad-hoc process for managing these increasingly critical relationships, companies see an average revenue increase of more than 30%from these partners.
The shadow channel of non-traditional partners has emerged because business unit buyers — who make 72 percent of purchasing decisions — increasingly turn to disparate groups like industry-based consultants, service providers, and independent software vendors to help implement technology given their role as trusted advisors.
“The shift in today’s partner landscape is tectonic,” said Impartner chairman and CEO Joe Wang. “With factors such as changing business models due to SaaS companies and the shift to business unit buyers from IT, an increasingly omnichannel environment has emerged to serve the customer no matter how they reach out. The time is now to make sure we’re rounding out our technology with solutions like Amplifinity to help our customers bring the same process and structure we’ve brought to managing traditional partner models to managing and rewarding new types of partners in this changing channel landscape.”
“This acquisition underscores that emerging partner groups have moved into the mainstream mix for corporations everywhere and need to be managed as such,” added Amplifinity CEO William (Bill) Weissman. “Traditional and non-traditional partners are the new normal for corporations everywhere, and by bringing our technology together with Impartner’s, customers now have a complete toolset to maximize their business relationship with every type of partner and accelerate revenue for everyone.”
Jay McBain — a principal analyst at Forrester’s Channel Partnerships and Alliances division — published insights about this trend earlier this year in a blog post titled “What I See Coming For The Channel In 2019.”
In the report, McBain is predicting “Vendors put formal shadow-channel programs in motion.” In the report, a vendor was cited as replacing its “traditional, compliance-based programs with new performance-based programs designed to reward all types of partners, business models, and various customer technology consumption preferences.”
This acquisition includes Amplifinity’s referral marketing software — which automates and formalizes the referral process for lead generation at scale and includes its incentive management technology and integrations to a suite of payment fulfillment providers to reward this new generation of partners in the manner they most prefer.
And Amplifinity’s team will remain in the company’s Ann Arbor offices, as it adds a Midwest team of developers to Impartner’s global Channel Innovation Labs made up of engineers, data scientists, UX and UI professionals and channel strategists who are committed to providing future-proof channel management technologies and services that accelerate channel performance.
