Technology is more important than ever before when managing partnerships. When you need to discover and recruit partners in today’s vast partnership economy, it is not effective to utilize a one-on-one manual process for recruiting, onboarding, optimizing, and paying partners. Managing a program in today’s marketplace without the proper technology can create a disjointed, complex, and costly operation that is difficult to scale. This set of challenges is exactly what Podium needed to address if they were to make a positive change for both themselves and their partners.
Podium wanted to scale, and they didn’t have the proper technology to break out of the methods they were using and turn their program into the robust program that achieved 100% growth in annual recurring revenue year over year. Podium realized that they needed to get away from their manual process of managing partnerships and implement technology that would allow them to keep pace with the demands of modern partnership programs. They needed to create efficiencies that would allow them to capitalize on the successes their program did have under the manual system that they have been relying upon. They needed to accelerate and streamline the recruiting and onboarding of partners utilizing an automated process that could make things happen faster, and they needed to eliminate redundancy using a consolidated tracking and reporting system. Finally, they needed to streamline communications between partners and the internal team at Podium using user-friendly invoicing and payment systems. Accomplishing this would change the level of success that they were seeing from their program in a significant way.
The right technology combined with the power of automation was necessary for Podium to achieve the goals they set out to accomplish. They decided that impact.com’s partner management platform was the solution to help them accomplish their goals to automate, consolidate, and manage their partnerships, as well as create growth in their program. Implementing this new system and methodology allowed them to find and manage partners more effectively and at a faster pace, and the partners they found added value to their program. Impact’s capabilities allowed them to recruit and onboard partners more effectively and efficiently than the old method of manually managing their partnerships. They created custom terms and agreements to match the individual needs of each new partner without weighing down their internal team. Podium was now also taking advantage of impact’s flexible tracking capabilities to test new marketing campaigns that aligned with their clients’ existing strategies. They were able to track referrals and not compromise any partner’s brand integrity. By using impact.com, Podium was also able to consolidate everything into one analytic and reporting view, which allowed them to properly capitalize on their program’s performance information in a meaningful way.
After utilizing impact’s partner management platform, Podium was able to realize the growth in their program that was possible. Over the course of eight months, Podium was able to reach $1M+, and they grew their program from 15 partners to 180 partners. They have achieved 100% growth in annual recurring revenue year over year and they have decreased customer acquisition costs by 37%. The right technology and methodologies allowed Podium to accomplish their partnership goals.