Season's Greetings and a Year-End Message
Posted 21st Dec, 2007
I"d like to take this opportunity to send you Seasons Greetings, wishing you and yours a peaceful and happy holiday. This also gives me an opportunity to sum up what has been an amazingly successful year for NitroSell, to show you how we have grown and changed, and to give you an idea of what you can expect from us in the coming year.
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Retail is quickly going multi-channel, and e-commerce is exploding. Against this background, NitroSell is helping an over 200-strong partner base win multi-channel deals that are powered in-store by Microsoft Dynamics RMS solutions. In November alone, there were more than 1.4 million unique Web visits across NitroSell stores in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Ireland, and the wider EU. During November, these visitors perused over 16 million product pages published by RMS/NitroSell-powered retailers, who operate nearly 700 physical retail stores. Personally, I can"t wait to see the final December figures, but I can say with confidence that we are going to break all previous records by a considerable margin!
From a marketing perspective, we"ve won awards from Microsoft as their "premier multi-channel" partner and as a "tier one" ISV. NitroSell was video-showcased in Allison Watson"s keynote speech at WWPC Denver in front of 7,000 partners, and the company has been appointed to no less than four Partner Advisory Councils (PACs), including the prestigious "Software plus Services" PAC. As of this month, NitroSell eCommerce is now an officially tested and certified "Microsoft Platform ISV" solution.
Improvements and Changes
NitroSell is a continually evolving company and now offers the premier e-commerce solution for RMS. NitroSell is quite simply in a class of its own - it"s easy to install, easy to configure, and is fully and comprehensively documented. Moreover, it is optimally priced to deliver outstanding ROI for the retailer, while providing excellent margins to our reseller and VAR partners. We provide a full technical and educational service for all partners who wish to avail of it. We also offer optional full implementation services that can be resold, and we provide optional full support and service plans to resellers and end users.
This year saw some major shifts in how we operate. Now we give our resellers choices on how to engage with us - from referral, all the way to full service provision of all of NitroSell"s product and services. We have three offices in the U.S., two in the U.K., and one in Ireland, out of which our Partner Account Managers (PAMs) operate. Our PAMs provide all the pre-sales and ordering assistance needed to demonstrate and sell the combined RMS/NitroSell solutions, and to present its unique value proposition and business benefits.
We have implemented numerous changes to our business in the past year, namely:
- Putting in place highly successful implementation teams with documented procedures that follow professional project-management standards. NitroSell can now offer these procedures and services to our partners.
- Vastly increasing the power and sophistication of our solution, while at the same time hiding the complexity of running what is effectively an enterprise-class e-commerce offering.
Developing a world-class Web-based Partner Portal (NSPP) that enables self-service account creation, e-commerce KPI reporting and performance graphs, a support ticketing system, Knowledge Base articles and FAQs, and access to a full documentation set that is growing on a daily basis.
- Improving the power and features of our automated billing and credit management system – you bill your clients, or you can use our system to partially or fully automate this process on your behalf.
Offering features such as unmatched integration with Google Analytics (including full e-commerce tracking and reporting), which is the industry-leading, enterprise-class Web analytics software. It provides a state-of-the-art user-interface experience, plus accurate and easy-to-understand reports on visitors: where they come from, how they use your site, what converts them into purchasers, right down to reporting on individual items. NitroSell is uniquely 100%-integrated with Google Analytics “out of the box”. We provide a vast amount of highly useful reports and graphs via our Partner Portal.
- Further fine-tuning our value proposition - our pricing plans and options deliver an enterprise solution at SMB prices. In particular, our “pay as you go” option is zero-risk, in that the retailer pays only on the success of his WebStore in attracting visitors. The retailer can use the NSPP performance graphs to closely monitor revenue versus charges and move between appropriate gigabyte plans. The gigabyte plans provide an excellent way to adhere to an operating budget.
Increasing the power features and accessibility of NitroScript, so that we now go way beyond the provision of customizable templates. The ability to customize a WebStore and make it completely unique is now limited only by the retailer"s budget. NitroScript is a high-end, e-commerce-focused superset of HTML. The "bang for the buck" that it delivers is quite simply unique in the industry. It is causing a sensation among professional Web designers.
The addition of a Web-based WebStore Manager (WSM), which brings new levels of power and ease when configuring, customizing, and managing a WebStore. Being Web-based, this means that the retailer or the Dynamics partner can manage his WebStore from any PC in the world. You can set up promotions, edit page content, configure gift wrapping, product reviews, and hundreds of WebStore options and set preferences, such as themes, header images, NitroScript, shipping methods and taxes, currencies and payment options, advanced search definition, and so on.
For NitroSell, Partnering Is the Key
A key worry that any Dynamics reseller has in relation to RMS add-ons is "will this third-party software cause more problems than it solves?". In this area, NitroSell has an enviable reputation. Because of the highly professional manner in which we design, engineer, and maintain our software and SaaS offerings, there has never been a NitroSell-induced technical issue with RMS or any other add-ons - just ask any of our partners or end users.
A related issue is adhering to a clear channel strategy. NitroSell differentiates itself clearly from others who provide RMS add-ons by being a “pure ISV”. From the very beginning we have have never sold RMS to any retailer anywhere and thus have never, and will never, compete with our Dynamics partners selling RMS. We don’t dilute our focus by attempting to provide a multitude of RMS add-ons, instead we concentrate on a single mission – delivering the very best e-commerce solution for Dynamics. We are passionate and committed about being the best-in-class global provider and know that the key to success is selling our products and services through our partner channel, and not directly.
For NitroSell, partnership and the partnering ecosystem are key. We are helping our partners win more RMS deals and to broaden their offerings (and thus their revenues) from their existing RMS install base, while respecting the sanctity of customer relationships. Retailers are fundamentally our partner"s customers - not ours. That"s not to say that we are not 100% committed to the success of the retailer end user. Indeed, this is reflected in our pricing structure, the underlying principle of which is: "the retailer only pays if his WebStore is an ongoing success in attracting visitors". This makes NitroSell one of the most customer-focused companies operating in the global software business - we don"t just sell boxes, we are 100% committed to the ongoing success of our customers.
I"d Love to Hear from You!I believe NitroSell has improved immensely in the last year. In fact, our progress has been so fast that it"s a challenge to get the message out! A minority of partners may think our products and the way we do business are the same as they were a year ago. If any of what you read here is news to you, or if you have any specific questions, please get in touch. I"d really love to speak with you.
From me and all the other NitroSell team members, I wish you a Happy Christmas and a profitable New Year.
Sincerely,
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Tom Keane, NitroSell President
