MaintenanceNet Launches Campaign Manager

Published: October 4, 2006

by Alex Woodie

MaintenanceNet this week unveiled Campaign Manager, a new online portal designed to help hardware resellers get in touch with their customers to maximize the opportunity to up-sell and cross-sell maintenance renewals, software supplies, consumables, and other incentive programs.

MaintenanceNet is not your run-of-the-mill software as a service (SaaS) company. Its focus up to this point has been to help OEM manufacturers and their large distributors better understand which customers may want or need to purchase existing maintenance or service contracts. The company, which primarily operates in Hewlett-Packard channels at this point in time, utilizes an extensive investment in database and data mining technologies, as well as relationships with OEMs, to sift through distributors' and VARs' customer data records to develop targeted strategies for reclaiming the money left on the table--and making customers happier in the process.

And there is a lot of money left on the table, with more than half of all contract renewals being allowed to expire with no further action taken by distributors, according to Scott Herron, president and CEO of the Carlsbad, California, company. "We've gone past low hanging. It's fruit on the ground," he says. "There are billions of dollar annually being missed because somebody doesn't send notification to the opportunity." The 50 percent figure is for the big channels. In the smaller, tier two and three channels, the renewal rate drops into the teens and single digits, he says.

Up to this point, MaintenanceNet has targeted primarily large manufacturers and distributors, such as Ingram Micro, with its services. These larger companies utilize MaintenanceNet's ability to find uncovered assets (or products sold without maintenance contracts), and then follow-up with individual VARs, which is really more of a "pull" strategy.

With the new Campaign Manager offering, MaintenanceNet is shifting to a "push" strategy. The new offering is designed to make the process of product registration easy (just go to a Web site and entire your information). It also enables users--primarily manufacturers, distributors, or the more sophisticated VARs--to easily send out e-mails to their customers to see if they're interested in purchasing additional services. Campaign Manager can also include telesales, if the customer would like to communicate with their customers over the phone.

"We bring more visibility than what they [manufactures and distributors] have access to today," Herron says. "It's not just tracking, but finding the assets, sending out renewals, converting the uncovered assets into covered assets, or promoting incentive programs."

Ingram Micro has benefited from Campaign Manager. "Through use of Campaign Manager, we have achieved a 90 percent or better product registration rate for HP products, putting us and our resellers in a better position to capitalize on new service renewal opportunities as they emerge," says Justin Crotty, vice president of channel marketing for Ingram Micro North America.

Campaign Manager is available now. Pricing depends on the size of the asset portfolio, and the number of manufacturers supported. For more information, visit www.maintenancenet.com.