SEATTLE, WA--(Marketwire - January 25, 2011) - As companies look to expand and grow sales channels, securing and maintaining partnerships becomes a higher priority. Avanade, a business technology services provider, today announced its Enterprise PRM on Demand offering, designed to help organizations build more dynamic, collaborative and profitable relationships with their channel partners. Based on the Microsoft® Dynamics CRM (customer relationship management) platform and Accenture's PRM Capability Framework, Avanade helps enable close collaboration and business process integration between enterprise clients and their partners to support joint-selling opportunities and increase revenues.

"Leading companies are investing in collaborative PRM strategies and applications that offer shared infrastructure to vendors and partners," said Ron Ref, a senior executive in Accenture's CRM practice. "These collaborative PRM applications are helping organizations team effectively with partners to achieve greater global reach, to increase revenues and to make significant strides on the road to high performance."

"Few companies can survive in a highly competitive landscape without an effective and extended channel of partners. Finding, recruiting and maintaining those relationships requires close collaboration between a business and its channel partners," said Aziz Virani, executive vice president, Global Technologies & Solutions at Avanade. "Traditional CRM solutions lack the ability to adequately store and manage partner information. Avanade's Enterprise PRM on Demand offering allows companies to accommodate rapid partner growth as well as increase engagement between their internal sales and partner sales teams to differentiate programs from the competition."

Avanade's Enterprise PRM capabilities will help companies to:

• Create scalable programs that identify and attract new partners and promote performance
• Reduce the time it takes to on-board partners so they can sell and support customers more quickly and effectively
• Support partners' efforts in lead distribution, deal registration and joint prospect management as they interact with customers and prospects to drive more opportunities, and enhance the partner and customer experience
• Deliver integrated on-line tools to increase visibility into partner performance for both parties
• Provide the internal and Internet-facing infrastructure to support thousands of complex channel relationships and foster communication among partners and within their organizations

Avanade's Enterprise PRM on Demand can be delivered through a managed Software-as-a-Service model, Avanade Online Services (AOS). AOS offers companies the benefits of cloud-based application adoption, including faster time to deployment and the flexibility to scale the technology to accommodate company growth.

The offering also tightly integrates with Microsoft SharePoint® Server and Microsoft Outlook to enable greater collaboration across sales and service interactions. Integration with Microsoft Outlook also makes it easier to embed preferred channel practices, such as incorporating PRM activities, contacts and scheduling into daily routines.

Avanade also offers an on-premises version of Enterprise PRM built on the new Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 platform. The company is a national sponsor for the launch of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 as the leading business technology services provider for dedicated Dynamics CRM services. Avanade has more than 400 Dynamics CRM consultants globally and has deployed approximately 100,000 seats on Dynamics CRM to date. Avanade offers customers more deployment options, scalable systems and broad skill sets in CRM solutions, and was also named Dynamics CRM Partner of the Year by Microsoft in both 2010 and 2009. For additional information on Avanade's CRM offerings, please visit http://www.gobeyondcrm.com/.

About Avanade
Avanade provides business technology services that connect insight, innovation and expertise in Microsoft technologies to help customers realize results. Avanade's services and solutions help improve performance, productivity and sales for organizations in all industries. The company applies Microsoft expertise from its global network of consultants, drawing on the right mix of onshore, offshore and near-shore skills, which together are designed to help deliver results faster, at lower cost and with less risk. Avanade, which is majority owned by Accenture, was founded in 2000 by Accenture and Microsoft Corporation and has more than 12,000 dedicated resources in more than 20 countries. Additional information can be found at www.avanade.com.

Contact Information:

MEDIA CONTACTS:
Avanade: Charlie Zaragoza
(206) 239-5893