New U.S. Player Looking For A Few Good Mobility VARs

Mobile field force automation vendor Retriever Communications this week launched a North American partner program, offering up its portfolio of mobile software and wireless SaaS-based solutions to the channel.

Sydney, Australia-based Retriever, which has U.S. headquarters in Houston, said its Premier Partner Program specifically targets systems integrators, ERP software providers and VARs in the mobility space that can resell its range of field service management solutions, dispatch and schedule services, mobile time sheets, and field asset management products.

The company's third-generation Retriever Application Development Environment 3 (RADE3), a mobile development platform organizations can use to build their own custom field-service apps for Windows, iOS and Android devices, also will be available to partners.

[Related: IDC: Eight Out Of Ten Smartphones Run Android, iOS ]

Retriever's wireless field service solutions, which have been on the Australian market since 1996, are aimed at saving on-the-go field workers time by enabling them to log bills, send invoices and have realtime access to off-site financial and inventory information on their mobile devices.

According to Retriever founder and CEO Mary Brittain-White, future partners stand to benefit from a broad offering of OS-agnostic apps, as the mobility trend continues to permeate organizations across the U.S.

"With mobile apps in the top three items of CIOs' 'to-do' lists, the greatest advantage Retriever offers is a solution with a 'silver bullet' in the sales cycle, which is that we can develop apps once and deploy them on iOS, Android or Windows form factors and have them be native," Brittain-White said. "Our competition is stuck in the embrace of HTML5 with its poor end-user experience for B2E apps."

Filbitron, the first reseller named to the Premier Partner Program in North America, described itself to CRN as both a traditional hardware VAR, primarily selling tablet PCs, and an in-house mobile software developer.

Typically, explained Filbitron President Jim Clark, the company shies away from partnering with another software vendor as it prefers to offer its own homegrown applications, particularly those for inventory and order entry management for the consumer packaged goods market.

But the breadth of Retriever's mobile solutions, coupled with its ability to work on a range of mobile operating systems, prompted Filbitron to take the leap, Clark told CRN.

"I think it's very timely, as the three operating systems -- iOS and Android and Windows -- are all being well accepted for mobile application deployments," Clark said. "So it's just very timely that we would have this [RADE] application generator and inspection software that runs in all three OSes."

The alliance also will mean net new customers, in a new market, for Filbitron. The Markham, Ontario-based company, which also partners with Panasonic, Fujitsu and tablet vendor Motion, sells mobile hardware into the field services market today, but its partnership with Retriever enables it to sell software as well, Clark said.

NEXT: Retriever's SaaS-Based Solutions Mean Ongoing Annuity

Retriever's Brittain-White said nearly 70 percent of the company's customers opt for SaaS-based delivery of its solutions because the associated service-level agreements and ongoing support model are essential for on-the-go field workers. When a SaaS-based sale is made, end clients pay a license-based fee each month, per user, and channel partners will receive an ongoing annuity of up to 30 percent.

"Under a SaaS sale, we offer the channel an ongoing annuity opportunity, which is great as we, Retriever, have the overhead and capital costs of the cloud delivery and 24x7 staffing, while the channel picks up the annuity immediately with no additional investment," Brittain-White said.

Retriever wants to position its partners as one-stop-shops for delivering a full, end-to-end mobile automation solution for clients, she continued.

"Our channel partners deliver all of the implementation services at the start of the project, project management, business analyst work of the job role we are automating, integration to the back-office systems, and provision of the handheld computers if rugged," Brittain-White added.

In addition, Retriever will arm its partners with training materials and tools to help them test their newly implemented infrastructures at client sites.