Addition Consulting dramatically enhanced the web presence of Thrane & Thrane by working collaboratively with the IT and Channel Marketing teams. The two most important goals of this project were, first, to expand and promote their global network of distributors and resellers, and second, make it easier for customers and prospects to locate local distributors of their products and services. A new Partner Extranet coupled with a new Partner Relationship Management application, both built upon Sitecore’s CMS, were instrumental in achieving these goals. Using these new tools allowed Thrane & Thrane to create a new channel marketing services team to work more closely with their distributors and resellers.
Challenge
Thrane & Thrane is the world´s leading manufacturer of equipment and systems for global mobile communication based on sophisticated satellite and radio technology. Since its incorporation in 1981, the company has established a strong position within global mobile communication solutions based on the Inmarsat system, and today Thrane & Thrane provides equipment for maritime, land-based and aeronautical use, and is a publically traded company.
Thrane & Thrane selected Addition Consulting to lead their effort in building a web solution that would create a closer online connection to their resellers and distributors. At the same time they wanted to create a more compelling buyer experience for the customers and prospects visiting their website.
Over time their LDAP user directory had grown so large that transferring this data over secure network connection had become a performance bottleneck. Furthermore, integrating large sets of LDAP data with various line of business data sources needed to relate resellers to products and vice versa had become complex and very hard to maintain.
Thrane & Thrane was manually updating distributor sales forecasts. Their ERP system tracked orders, co-op marketing dollars and distributor bonuses, but the distributor had no visibility into this system. They needed a way to more effectively manage their distributor/reseller relationships.
Solution
A Sitecore partner, Addition, chose Sitecore as the platform for Thrane & Thrane’s corporate website as well as their extranet. The flexibility and scalablity of Sitecore allowed Addition to build and customize the sites to meet Thrane & Thrane’s goals, while at the same time integrate seamlessly with other technologies. The combination of Sitecore’s powerful CMS along with Addition’s expertise provided a winning solution.
Corporate Website
To address performance and scalability issues, Addition Consulting developed a secure, bi-directional data tunneling application that schedules the transfer of data between the back-end systems and web applications. This dramatically improved performance and made data integration with other applications much easier.
Addition also created a Partner Relationship Management application that captures Partner data. This data is sent to the appropriate Master Distributor and Account Manager. Potential Resellers and Distributors can now apply online to become part of Thrane & Thrane’s global partner network.
The Distributors search application is tightly integrated with the partner information data imported from the back-end system. Addition Consulting used its Agile development methodology to rapidly guide Thrane & Thrane’s team to a Distributor search solution. This effort resulted in a clean and simple wizard solution that allows website visitors to easily find a specific partner in his region.
Extranet
Addition Consulting developed their Partner Relationship Management as part of their Extranet which also seamlessly integrates their LDAP user Directory and their Enterprise Resource Planning system into the solution. The solution enables the T&T Account Managers to communicate directly with their Distributors via a secure workflow processes. They are now able to report actual sales numbers and forecasts in real time during each quarter. Sales are aggregated from their ERP system to the PRM which then calculates bonuses, co-op marketing dollars and discount levels. The workflow is fully integrated with email notification system that ensures that the correct recipient performs the required steps in the workflow.
Result
The sites are now product and solution driven and have been consolidated into one instance of Sitecore CMS. This allows modular scalability as the functionality requirements evolve in the future. The Thrane & Thrane web platform is now able to support their constantly growing web traffic.
The user-friendly interface and rich functionality makes extensive use of the Sitecore CMS APIs to integrate all of the business processes. The response times on partner-related pages has been improved by over 500%.
Extranet sales tools help consolidate Thrane & Thrane’s industry leading position and provide timely, valuable forecast information to account managers and partners. For example, the T&T Account Managers can now easily search for partners in different regions, see their production data and generate easy to understand graphical financial reports. Master Distributors can now register their resellers directly with Thrane & Thrane and the responsible Account Manager receives notification to follow up in the new reseller registration process.