PRM? What the heck is PRM?

NetSuite, Inc. today announced an addition to its flagship NetSuite product and in NetSuite CRM+: NetSuite Partner Relationship Management plus (or, you guessed it, PRM+). PRM is a philosophy within the CRM philosophy which focuses on partners as customers.

NetSuite sees itself as a pioneer in second-generation PRM as, in 2003, the firm introduced joint lead, opportunity management and service management functions in a combined CRM/PRM product. The PRM+ release is a return to the old philosophy, bringing the integration of PRM and CRM together with the back-office transactional. CRM and PRM processes addresses back office element for sales management and order fulfillment, inventory availability, returns processing, and partner incentive compensation management.

"NetSuite is on a mission to correct the misguided course of customer relationship management that other CRM vendors have charted and too many companies have followed,” declared Zach Nelson, captain of the Enterprise – sorry, CEO of NetSuite. “NetSuite is setting the correct course with PRM, CRM and the back-office facilitating a seamless business process.”

PRM+ is available now in NetSuite and NetSuite CRM+. Partner commission is available in the Incentive Compensation module for $299 per month; Advanced Partner Center access is available for $49 per month per partner.

Incidentally, there’s a nice piece on PRM’s history – mostly dominated by NetSuite – over at TMCNet.com. The PRM market, even taking into account its limits as a very small niche market, remains very small beyond the efforts NetSuite and a few indies are pouring into it. TMCNet editor David Sims concludes that PRM “never really took off the way some hoped it would. Nevertheless it remains a good idea, workable in places. Just don’t bet the ranch on it.”

NetSuite, Inc. is billed as the leader in on-demand business software suites and the fastest-growing software company in North America, according to the Deloitte Fast 500 study. NetSuite seeks to enable management of accounting, enterprise resource planning, CRM, and e-commerce.