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It’s hard enough to manage and merge the strengths of people within one company or location. The challenges there only get hairier when organizations bring their channel partners into the mix. But a company called Relayware is working to make B2B collaboration multichannel, affordable, and simple.

The Relayware SaaS (News - Alert)-based solution enables companies to manage joint sales planning, business planning, lead management, deal registration, renewals, onboarding, recruitment, and incentive initiatives. It also supports collaboration with and among the channel via multiple modes, including e-mail, IM and social networking. And businesses can use the platform to build portals and landing pages for various campaigns and extranets. The company even offers native mobile apps.

More than 30 customers – including Allstate Insurance, audio/visual company Avid, PC company Lenovo (News - Alert), document management outfit Lexmark, and content/consumer electronics giant Sony – now rely on the Relayware solution, which is targeted at companies with between $250 million and $5 billion in revenue.

Relayware’s angle on the market is drawing the interest not only of customers but also of investors. The company in late September announced it has raised $5.5 million from Albion Ventures to expand its U.S. operations. That should carry the company through the end of 2018, at which point it plans to go for a second round. The plan is to grow revenue to $35 million by the end of 2017. Relayware is generating $5 million in annual revenue right now.

“This transaction is the culmination of an extensive amount of research, which identified external social collaboration with indirect channels as a particularly high growth area across many industries,” commented Emil Gigov, partner at Albion Ventures. “With the rapid growth in adoption of enterprise collaboration software and the significant benefits to businesses of extending collaboration beyond their enterprise, we believe that Relayware presents a highly attractive investment opportunity."

Relayware CEO Mike Morgan tells CUSTOMER magazine that the company’s main competitor is Salesforce. But Relayware is stronger in the area of marketing and program automation, he said. The Salesforce solution is also more expense, according to Morgan, who says it requires companies to get separate licenses for different partners. Relayware only requires one license from the company, which can then allow channel partners to leverage the solution.

Up until recently Relayware has sold its own solutions direct, but this year and next it

will start to ramp up its business development initiative to recruit go-to-market partners including consultancies and marketing services companies that specialize in channel enablement, as well as systems integrators.

“It is definitely a value-added sale,” Morgan says. “We don’t sell shrink wrapped software.”