December 04, 2017 | Andrew Lawlor

Working with Aptaria, Vartopia created a Salesforce plugin to help simplify deal registrations and improve channel profitability for vendors and value-added resellers.

Problem: Lacking Capabilities to Address the Deal Registration Process

Vartopia was founded with one primary goal: Simplifying the way information technology vendors and value-added resellers (VARs) connect with each other to register deals.

Deal registration is the key component in what had long been a complicated process for VARs to win the right to sell vendors’ IT products to their clients. It was complex both for VARs and the vendors – often becoming resource-intensive, inconsistent and inconvenient. Vartopia’s solution had to include integration with Salesforce CRM, its leadership figured, as many VARs were already using it.

But Vartopia didn’t have the in-house capability to integrate their new platform with Salesforce CRM, so they reached out to Aptaria.

“We’re not Salesforce experts,” says Mike Reilly, Vartopia’s CEO and co-founder. “Salesforce has their app exchange, which is essentially a platform where you can develop your own app, or you can work with a company like Aptaria.”

Action: Partnering With Aptaria to Open a New ‘Galaxy’ for Resellers

Aptaria designed and built a customized Salesforce CRM plugin called “Galaxy,” the IT industry’s only multi-vendor deal registration platform. Before, managing and measuring channel business was a manual, labor-intensive process for VARs. But with Galaxy, resellers can submit, manage and measure all of their deal registrations on a single screen, maximizing their ability to take advantage of partner program benefits.

When they saw what Galaxy did for resellers, vendors began to ask if they could get similar efficiencies in the deal registration process. Vartopia and Aptaria worked together to design and built another custom Salesforce plugin, “Nova.”

Nova gives vendors access to deal registrations through the Salesforce CRM module, so they can review, manage and measure deal registrations directly within the CRM. For Reilly and his team, rolling out Nova in June 2014 was a turning point for the deal registration process.

Result: More Vendors & Resellers Connecting Through Vartopia

In addition to simplifying deal registration, Nova’s benefits include:

Support for multiple registration programs and/or forms, including program rule validation;
Synchronization of partner accounts and users between the Nova online portal – where partners submit, manage and measure their deals – and Salesforce;
Centralized registration management in Salesforce; and
Specific, customizable deal registration reports and dashboards.

[Source: vartopia.com]

With both Galaxy and Nova, Reilly says the single-screen advantage produces significant dividends for vendors and VARs. Companies can now go in and quickly review and manage partner deal registration directly in Salesforce, reducing operational overhead and improving channel intelligence.

“Think of it like a travel website that offers hotel and rental car services. Rather than going to a rental car website and a hotel’s website individually, you can do it all on the same page,” Reilly says. “Vartopia does the same thing in this technology space. If you’re a reseller and want to register an opportunity with a vendor … rather than going through all these individual systems, you can go through the Vartopia system.”

Since Aptaria’s involvement, Vartopia has been able to bring business to a whole new level.

“It’s given us the capability to connect resellers who want to take advantage of Vartopia. Prior to engaging, we couldn’t do that. We had customers resellers who were using platform and they wanted to be able to connect CRM to ours,” Reilly says. “Aptaria allowed us to do that.”