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Company: RightAnswers
Headquarters: Clark, N.J.
Technology Sector: Software
Key Product: Unified Knowledge Suite
Year Founded: 2001
Number of Channel Partners: 25 in North America
Ideal Channel Partner: Midmarket-focused solution providers
Why You Should Care: RightAnswers offers a help desk software suite that pairs well with Microsoft SharePoint and Google Search Appliance.
The Lowdown: As the costs and competition to provide help desk support increases, RightAnswers believes its offering can provide all the, well ... right answers.
The Clark, N.J.-based developer has created a knowledge management suite used by help desk and technical support providers to offer more accurate information more quickly, according to Jeff Weinstein, president and CEO. RightAnswers has about 250 customers and four million nodes in use, from small city government agencies up to large corporations, Weinstein said.
"The company provides knowledge management and self-service solutions used by help desks for internal support. We provide knowledge management to end users that can solve problems on their own, without having to call the help desk. We give tools to help desk support analysts to provide that," he said.
The company has two distinct types of channel partners. First, companies and consulting organizations that serve as help desk or support services arms for other companies. Those companies include Accenture, CompuCom, Sitel and HP Enterprise Services (formerly EDS), according to RightAnswers
Second are solution providers selling Microsoft Sharepoint or Google Search Appliance.
"The outsourcers for us were the ones that got us initially into bigger accounts ... Those are people doing consulting work, and they are a good channel for us," Weinstein said.
About 20 percent of RightAnswers' customers have SharePoint implemented, and a growing number have Google's Search Appliance for internal documents, he said.
"Those organizations do a lot of portal work and a lot of search work for intranet environments. Our solution fits really well into those," Weinstein said. "It's a nice opportunity for people who have that to sell to clients to [also] sell our solution to them."
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