Extranet ISV ChannelWave Software Inc is stepping up its partner relationship management (PRM) campaign and is seeking a further injection of venture funding to top up the $7.5m it is currently spending.
The company believes its value proposition is in managing indirect sales channels using an application whose primary users are the partners themselves. It claims rivals including Webridge, PartnerWave, Allegis, MarketSoft and to a lesser extent Pivotal and SAP are effectively providing lead management. It believes traditional customer relationship management applications are company- and customer-centric client/server programs which require holes in the firewall. Its products are designed to recruit, manage and maintain channel partners for IT companies, including consultants, ISVs, distributors, resellers, VARs, OEMs and retailers.
The company says its web-based, partner-centric extranet software has the largest footprint in the market, and boasts 3Com, Intel and Nortel Networks as three of its 12 production sites. Moreover, as the market matures it believes the competition will mostly morph away from pure PRM leaving it to build out full- service partner lifecycle management tools.
The average selling price of its software is $500,000 and the company is focused on the high-end of the market. With an anticipated $4m sales in 1999, the company it says it will leverage application service providers to get its software into other parts of the market and says that it’s currently in discussions with Exodus Communications.
A 3.0 release of the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company’s Partner Communications System software in October will be followed by ChannelWave 4.0 in the first quarter of next year. It expects to be up to 75 employees by year-end. It is currently focused on supplying PRM to the IT industry but says it has its sights on other markets.
ChannelWave was formed as Virtuflex Software Corp and began developing extranets for IT companies in 1997. Although its first development was on Unix, the company’s software is now a Microsoft play, utilizing BizTalk. That’s where the business applications are, it claims. It says it will do Java in future.
