Found: The Next-generation Partner Portal
Sure, hardware and software companies have built numerous portals for their channel partners. Some are big hits. Others are ugly misses. But here’s a twist: Laurus Technologies, a Certified Dell Partner in Itasca, Ill., has built a rather intriguing portal that could bolster customer loyalty. Here are the details.
The Laurus customer portal strives to provide “total control and visibility of a[customer’s] hardware installations, track asset depreciation and book value, and manage configuration and software licensing information.”
Translation: Laurus is managing valuable business information for its customers — the type of data points that companies crave for their accounting, financial management and IT planning. With that type of “stickiness,” The VAR Guy believes the portal could be a key tool for customer retention.
Oh, and there’s a managed services hook here, too. Laurus says the portal “also provides administrative access to Managed Services and SaaS offerings including hosted messaging, email archiving, remote backup and disaster-recovery services.”
Hmmm… But what’s really in it for customers? Laurus claims the portal offers customers five key benefits:
- Reduced cost of managing IT assets by leveraging the portal as a platform and vendor–independent central repository for all vendor maintenance contracts and managed services.
- The ability to manage customized asset data as well as the relationships between assets.
- Productivity gains through self-service capabilities.
- Proactive advance notification of contract expiration, warranty expiration and “End of Service” dates.
- Powerful tracking and reporting tools for asset management.
But does the portal work as advertised? Laurus officially announced the portal on March 3. The VAR Guy will check in with the company in a few weeks to see how customers are taking to the system.
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Wow, if they can truly do all of those things, that will be a great value to customers. Larger VARs (Dell, CDW, Insight) all have those components, but they never have been able to do more than collect information. I think Laurus Technologies could have a very powerful value play here.
Dave: The VAR Guy is intrigued as well. But our resident blogger wonders if the Laurus portal can fulfill its promise. Our resident blogger will be watching.
-TVG
This is very compelling, I think the portal could be a very useful web 2.0 app., I would love to be able to use that as a service for my customers.
Andrew, Dave: Switching topics ever so slight, Autotask’s buyout of VARStreet (announced today) could give VARs yet another portal opportunity.
-TVG
TVG, Yeah I saw that this morning. An interesting question (where we won’t know the answer for months) is: What will Autotask to with VARStreet? Are they going to leave it alone, invest some money to make it better, or overmanage it into the ground? I’m hoping they leave it alone or maybe just add little tweeks.
Dave: Autotask has completely overhauled VARStreet’s corporate brand/landing page. But The VAR Guy thinks Autotask won’t muck around too much with VARStreet’s platform. Autotask CEO Bob Godgart mentioned that the Autotask and VARStreet SaaS architectures are remarkably similar. So, watch for lots of hooks between the two.
Also, it’s pretty clear that Autotask will start marketing VARStreet to the VAR masses. Instead of working with a few large VARs, Autotask wants VARStreet to attract small and large solutions providers as well.
Can Autotask execute on all this? That remains to be seen…
-TVG
One of the challenges with this all-inclusive approach to a portal is that it assumes the customer buys all hardware, software and services from one place. Even the tightest managed IT shops have a legacy component, or like the news this morning, will acquire or merge with another firm who has a completely different environment to integrate. That being said, great initiative, and one we can all learn from – adding value at every customer touch point.