By Khali Henderson

Startup Integrexx (Booth 728) announced it is seeking channel partners for its new subscription-based telecom expense management (TEM) service targeted uniquely at midmarket companies.

A lot of the rollup companies sort of walked away from the midmarket, said Rob Fortino, president of Integrexx, which was formed in December 2005. Their focus is on companies that spend $5 [million] to $6 million, but no one was focusing on that half a million to $4 million spend a year.

Integrexx is targeting companies that spend a minimum of $250,000 per year and up to $4 million. Our sweet spot is going to be $750,000 to $2 million, he said.

Agents will earn 20 percent commission on all recurring and nonrecurring revenue from their accounts, he said. If a customer is billing $2,500 a month [in telecom services], then the agent will get 20 percent of that, or $500 per month, Fortino explains.

Integrexxs TEM service is hosted, so there are no installation requirements, but there are fees for getting a customer into the system. Integrexx is hosting software licensed from an undisclosed vendor that specializes in invoice processing. The software has been customized for Integrexx to handle telecommunications expenses. Fortino says the company took this approach rather than writing its own code for several reasons, but primarily to ensure that it works.

One of our selling points is that we are not building software from the ground up like a lot of TEM providers are, he said, explaining that service issues often arise when telemanagement companies that are not software experts deliver software. We wanted to get a software package that really, really works, thats solid and stable.

Because the invoice processing platform was not made exclusively for telecom, agents are not limited to helping customers manage telecom-related expenses.

We can do any invoice processing whether its utilities or logistics or pencils. Thats the beauty of having a generic processing platform; there is tremendous upsell opportunity for the agents, he said.

Further, Integrexx will be using the channel exclusively for its sales. We are not even going to have a direct sales force, said Fortino. He expected to sign the companys first agents in February and have customers on the platform as early as April.

Integrexx primarily is recruiting agents that sell network services.

I look at TEM as a way for them to augment their revenue stream that the carriers are taking away, he said, noting that he hopes to sign 75 reps this year.