CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT ACTIVITY

Submitted by: Submitted to:

Name: Madhur jain Dr. AJS Batra

Roll No. 1920991113

TABLE OF CONTENT

1. Concept, importance and benefits of supplier relationship

management

2. Concept and best practices related to partner relationship

management
Concept, importance and benefits of supplier relationship
management.

Supplier management is the relationship formed between a buyer and supplier,

subject to the criticality of the goods or services being purchased and supplied
into your organization, determines the type of working relationship that you
should look to form with your suppliers. Supplier relationship management is a
core soft skill for all procurement and supply managers.

How Do You Manage Supplier Relationships?

To manage a supplier is to assess their capability to meet your contractual needs,

to measure their performance during the contracting period, to work with them
to identify challenges whilst looking to improve the working relationship, ensuring
you have the right levels of contact to ensure that the relationship remains on
track for both parties, in order to get the best from the working relationship.

CIPS Knowledge-related topics, best practice guides and white papers include:
collaborative working, managing supplier performance, supplier development and
diligent procurement.

Benefits of Supplier Relationship Management

The goal of SRM is to leverage relationships with suppliers in order to build value
and profitability for a business. Done right, supplier relationship management can
reduce wholesale costs, improve efficiency and eliminate redundancies in the
supply chain.

Reduced Costs

Optimizing supply chain management practices can dramatically reduce the costs
associated with establishing relationships with new suppliers. Sourcing new
suppliers, sampling products and negotiating contracts is a costly, time-consuming
process and mistakes made can undermine the growth of a company.

Pinpointing existing suppliers who have the capacity to meet the current and
future needs of a company can mean stable costs and a reliable supply chain —
two critical factors in the profitability and sustainability of any business.

Increased Efficiency

Identifying supplier relationships that align with corporate goals can also lead to
increased efficiency. As with every type of healthy, mutually-beneficial
relationship, communication improves over time. Suppliers gain a clearer
understanding of the specific needs of the businesses they work closely with, and
that helps eliminate supply chain delays. If issues should arise, having an
established relationship can make troubleshooting a relatively pain-free process.

Stable Pricing

Using a supplier scorecard is a key part of supplier relationship management

because it quickly highlights the various pricing strategies used by each supplier.
SRM helps companies spot the suppliers who offer fixed pricing, which eliminates
concerns over cost fluctuations. Analyzing supplier relationships, and focusing on
the ones that are most beneficial, can also give companies the leverage to
negotiate lower costs in exchange for a longer contract term, higher minimum
order levels and other negotiable points.

Supply Team Consolidation

When a company and its suppliers focus on building relationships in a way that
works for all parties, companies often decide to shorten their supplier list.
Working with fewer suppliers can result in significant, lasting cost savings realized
by eliminating the variables and extra processes involved with maintaining a large
roster of suppliers.

Examples of Supplier Relationship Management

Supply chain management practices vary widely across all industries. In general,
large industries such as automotive manufacturing maintain a rigid set of tools
and guiding principles that dictate their approach to suppliers. Given that supplier
relationship management is fundamental to the success of the automotive
industry, it's easy to understand the critical role SRM has in this context.

Other industries such as retail and food service are equally as dependent on a
solid supply chain, but there are far more options when it comes to choosing
suppliers. In most markets, companies have a number of suppliers available, all of
which offer similar products, pricing and services. While it's easy to dismiss SRM
as a practice that's only applicable to big industry, SRM is just as important to the
success of small and medium-sized enterprises.
Concept and best practices related to partner relationship
management.

Partner relationship management (PRM) is a set of software and strategies that

companies use to enable smooth business relationships with those they partner
with on marketing and those that sell their products. PRM can range from simple
approaches for managing co-marketing relationships to complex programs
involving sophisticated software and data-management.

What is a partner program?

Partner programs can have a range of formats and purposes depending on your
type of business and your goals for partnering with other companies.

In many cases, partners sell your product or service in exchange for a commission
or credit. Another option is for partners to refer leads to you in exchange for a
commission or credit. Other types of partnerships are focused more on
marketing; your company might team up with another company to do content
creation, webinars, guest blogging, or other marketing activities. These efforts
should be mutually beneficial for both partners.
Fast-growing SaaS companies embrace partner relationships as a way to seek new
and innovative opportunities to gain traction in the marketplace. Partner
relationship management can help your company reach new customers, scale
quickly, and execute new marketing ideas and options that otherwise might not
be available. It’s important to be selective in choosing partners, working only with
companies whose goals, values, stage of development, and product offerings
match up with or complement your own.

Partner relationship management best practices

However, building a network of successful channel partners require a thoughtful

approach and adherence to best practices. Here are the five core partner
relationship management best practices.

1. Know your partners. Before you can put together a solid partner

relationship management framework and strategy, it is essential for you to
understand who your partners are, how they make money, how they
differentiate in the marketplace they sell to and what keeps them awake at
night. Without understanding these fundamental drivers, it is almost
impossible for an organization to get true engagement from their partner
base. In addition to understanding their business drivers, it is also
important for you to figure out how your products fit into their product
portfolio. If your solution is the primary product in their portfolio, they will
engage accordingly, but if you are just an add-on, your approach to
managing the relationship will have to be different.
2. Understand the mathematics of reach. Sometimes it is tempting to go for
the widest distribution possible by signing up as many partners or resellers
as you can. However, this approach brings challenges like over-distribution,
channel conflict and potential lawsuits, and needless to say poses the risk
of creating a lot of unproductive and unhappy partners. Therefore, it’s very
important to understand in detail how you are going to distribute your
products to end buyers and calculate how many partners you need to hit
your revenue growth goals. You would be surprised how few companies
actually sit down and do this math.

3. Calculate training and incentives requirements. Just like any new

relationship, your relationship with new partners can be quite exciting in
the beginning. Eventually, however, companies realize that it actually takes
more to train an indirect sales force than it does to train your own
employees. The reason for this is very simple: Learning about your products
is the primary focus of a direct sales force, but partners typically are
learning about and selling products from multiple vendors, so it is very
difficult for them to invest the time in learning about yet another product,
especially if the product is constantly changing due to new capabilities, new
versions and so on. The fact is, partners tend to spend more time selling
existing or mature products more than new products. This is a major insight
that many companies overlook at first, often realizing it only after they have
failed to reach the sales velocity of new products they had hoped for.

4. Manage the loyalty of partners. It is important for you to understand that

a partner’s primary loyalty is to their customer base and their employees.
 No matter how great your products and services are, if your activity in
anyway undermines a partner’s relationship with their customers, your
partner’s relationship with you may be seriously threatened. So, while you
must put your partners in the middle of your service and support
infrastructure, you absolutely need to make sure their end-customers are
treated with a white glove approach. This is essential in building reputation
with your partner base. Your business may be transactional, but most
partners build their business based on relationships first and transactions
later on.

PRM software

Partner relationship management is a broad concept that encompasses all aspects

of how you manage your relationships with your partners. If you have a partner
program of any real size or complexity, this is likely to include some PRM software
to help you manage your processes most effectively.

According to Forrester, the PRM software market is surging: 23 vendors with

some amount of PRM functionality are responsible for $350 million in annual
software revenue, a figure that is likely to grow to $679 million by 2023. If you
count both PRM software and PRM service provision, the market totals $850
million today and is likely to grow to $1.65 billion by 2023.
What you can expect from PRM software

PRM software is usually cloud-based and can include a variety of tools and
options, such as methods of tracking leads, revenue, metrics, inventory, pricing,
discounting, promotions, lead distribution, deal registration, marketing
development, and operations.

This type of software will usually have a partner portal to enable communication
and data exchange, a customer database for information management, features
to control access, a dashboard to monitor results and KPIs, and the ability to
integrate with other business tools for managing contracts, work time, content,
scheduling, and expenses.
How to choose the best PRM software

Similar to customer relationship management (CRM) software

like Salesforce, Zoho, and Hubspot, there are a variety of PRM software solutions
to choose from. Some of the more widely trusted PRM software options include:

 ImpartnerPRM

 Salesforce PRM

 PartnerStack

 Channeltivity

 Allbound

 Ziftsolutions

When it comes to choosing the best PRM software for your company, there are a
number of factors that might affect your decision, which is why thoroughly
assessing the specific needs of your company, appropriately prioritizing those
needs, and researching your options will always be the best course of action.

The PRM software you choose should reflect a variety of considerations like
industry, budget, onboarding requirements, features, integrations, and even the
specific partnership strategies you choose to pursue. For example, If you’re
already using Salesforce CRM software, choosing their PRM software might make
the most sense for your company if creating a seamless integration and
streamlining the user experience between both solutions is a priority.

On the other hand, the SaaS industry is unique in a lot of ways and as a startup
you might be looking for a PRM software solution with a solid industry-wide
reputation. Luckily, there are a couple industry leaders in the PRM space for SaaS
companies, both of which boast impressive customer portfolios. For instance
PartnerStack is the PRM software choice for a number of major SaaS solutions
including Intuit, Asana, Unbounce, Drip, monday.com, Freshworks and Evernote.
Another SaaS industry favorite is Allbound, the PRM solution for companies like
Zoom, WP Engine, DigitalOcean, Optimizely, Uberflip, and more.

Selecting a PRM software is an important decision and a significant investment

you shouldn’t take lightly. With the proper considerations, you should be able to
narrow down your selection to a short list of options that best fit your needs.
From there, simply follow up with your top choices to schedule a demo and see
the software in action.