Encover 3.0 Solution Gives Manufacturers, Channel Partners the Ability to Reclaim 50-70 Percent of Service Contract Revenues

Industry-first Software Capabilities Include Management of Multi-party Agreements To Help Manufacturers Collaborate With Resellers Throughout the Service Contract Lifecycle

In a recent report, AMR Research stated that “because of competitive pressures and a general lack of visibility, most companies are missing 50 percent to 70 percent of the potential revenue [around services].”* Encover 3.0 is the first packaged application designed to apply visibility and control to the service contract lifecycle for every member of the demand chain. Encover applications enable companies to cost-effectively reclaim high-margin revenue, improve profitability for both manufacturers and their partners, and increase customer satisfaction.

“For many IT vendors and their channel partners, services represents an untapped reservoir of revenue and profit opportunities,” stated Jeff Kaplan, founder and managing director, THINKstrategies. “Manufacturers often have substantial unclaimed revenue in the form of expired service contracts buried in their installed base; they can harvest these contracts and drive higher margin revenue by working more effectively with their channel partners. Encover’s latest solution streamlines the service revenue management process, enabling its manufacturing and reseller customers to capitalize on this revenue opportunity.”

Encover 3.0: More Revenue from the Service Contract Lifecycle
Encover 3.0 was architected to solve a crucial business challenge: maximizing revenue from service contracts. Encover improves installed base visibility, streamlines service contract renewal and quote delivery, helps channel partners to sell more services, and guides customers to easily renew their support contracts. Encapsulating best practices around service contract management, Encover 3.0 automates cross-organizational processes, from identifying service contract opportunities, through product registration, quote generation, negotiation, payment, and service entitlement. Capabilities are accessed through three unique portal views: the Encover Sales Portal for a manufacturer’s administrators and internal sales and service personnel; the Encover Channel Partner Portal for distributors and resellers; and the Encover Customer Portal for end customers.

"Maximizing our services business is key to Enterasys,” said Tom Bunce, vice president, customer advocacy at Enterasys. "We looked at various solutions, but only Encover provided a solution built to handle the unique challenges of the service renewal processes in a multi-tiered channel environment. Encover maps well to our business objectives.”

New capabilities and business processes in version 3.0 make it easier for manufacturers to extend the value of Encover across their demand chains. Enhanced features include:

• New channel partner capabilities give distributors and resellers direct access to a manufacturer’s service contract quoting engine. Using Encover 3.0, channel partners can proactively manage service contract quotes and contracts with minimal effort. For example, resellers view contract renewals at a glance, update a customer’s installed base information, generate and edit quotes, and track the customers’ acceptance. Channel partners can also extend a subset of these capabilities directly to customers for cost-effective self-service. Encover also provides a set of pre-configured business processes supporting most channel-based business models.
  
• Enhanced role-specific access gives manufacturers global visibility across their entire installed base, while granting partners access to deal-specific information for products they have sold. Users can review and manage all of their own installed base information, including information from multiple resellers. Data access rules define and control the parties that have security for viewing and modifying information presented to each user for each type of session. For example, Encover provides secure access to different parties on the quote based on their relationship.
  
• Multi-party agreements allow for full visibility and ownership of service business being quoted by resellers in collaboration with manufacturers. Encover 3.0’s capabilities include automated notification of quote activity to salespeople when channel partners need approvals. The solution also supports multiple distribution, reseller, or manufacturer relationships that can be defined by contract. Encover 3.0 provides flexible data access rules that govern the responsibilities of each party in the channel relationship.
  
• Enhanced up-sell and cross-sell capabilities for products and services help users automatically define and create multiple service options for the customer. Products and add-on professional services can be sold alongside contract sales, significantly enhancing the revenue opportunity of each contract renewal.

“Encover helps companies like Juniper Networks and Enterasys achieve a substantial competitive advantage by giving channel partners new service revenue opportunities that deliver top line growth across the board,” states Chip Overstreet, president and CEO of Encover. Manufacturers can use Encover to help their partners capture high margin, predictable, recurring revenue through services. Encover 3.0 streamlines the complexity of the service contract lifecycle process through the channel, ultimately enabling companies to deliver partner profitability.”

Available immediately, Encover 3.0 leverages powerful analytics and business rules and provides security, scalability and extensibility via a three tier, J2EE compliant architecture.

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