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Encover uncovers service contract revenues for resellers
by Mark Riehl

For channel partners who have been feeling the pain of not turning a profit on product sales, and for whom the days of high margins are just another painful memory, Encover is offering some much needed relief in the form of service contract revenues.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company has just released Encover 3.0 for IT equipment manufacturers, which is designed specifically to solve a critical business challenge for the channel by maximizing revenue from service contracts and delivering top line growth across the board.

"There is a lot of pain because not a lot oierrsellers are making money from product sale right now," said Chip Overstreet, president and CEO of Encover. "They tend to be making most of their money from service contracts and professional services."

Manufacturers using the latest version can help their channel partners capture high margin, along with predictable, recurring revenue through services.

"The resellers that we have talked to that use our software, tell us that they will spend anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of months on a single service quote. We can now reduce that down to a couple of hours," he said.

Typically the laborious nature of service contract management has caused the channel to be limited in the service opportunities they can go after because the bandwidth isn't there.

"When you introduce automation into the process it gives them the ability to have 100 per cent coverage of all of the service contracts and thereby drive much more revenue for every part of the demand chain," Overstreet explained."

According to AMR Research, competitive pressures and a general lack of visibility have caused most companies to miss out on 50 per cent to 70 per cent of the potential revenue around services.

Version 3.0 will enable vendors to better collaborate and apply visibility and control to the service contract lifecycle with their channel.

"We have really drilled much more deeper into the enablement of channel partners," Overstreet said. "Rather than taking a manufacturing centric view of the solution we started with the reseller and said 'what does the reseller really need' and lets make sure, as we build out the next version of the product that all of the capabilities are designed around the way in which the reseller needs to use this product."

New and enhanced capabilities include multi-party support with enhanced role-based access, the ability to handle multi-party agreements, and more robust up-sell and cross-sell capabilities.

"There are a number of processes baked into the product that are designed to make it as easy as possible for the reseller to participate in the process," he added.

Encover 3.0 automates cross-organizational processes, from identifying service contract opportunities through product registration, quote generation, negotiation, payment, and service entitlement. These capabilities can be accessed through three portal views, which include its Sales Portal for a manufacturer's administrators, internal sales and service personnel; the Channel Partner Portal for distributors and resellers; and the Customer Portal for end users.

On Nov. 11 the company will unveil Enterasys Networks, a provider of business-driven networks for enterprises as its latest manufacturer that has licensed Encover software.

Over the last three months the company has closed three vendor deals to go along with Juniper Networks who is coming up on a year using the software.

"They have had tremendous success," Overstreet noted.

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