How a Fast Growing SaaS Organization Improved Sales and Implementation Collaboration with Custom Deal Registration

AdvoLogix is a leading provider of enterprise legal management software for managing legal information in context. They serve both corporate law firms and public sector clients.

Two of the key elements of running a successful SaaS business are the sales and deployment operations. AdvoLogix relies on partners quite heavily for both. Because of the diversity in the types of legal matter &, spend management, and integrations  they provide, along with the diversity of legal teams, AdvoLogix requires  a diverse set of partners — not only to resell their product but also to do deployments of their solution. AdvoLogix’s primary goals are to ensure their customers get the best quality solutions at good prices, experience quality deployments, and gain business benefits from using their software.

The Challenge

Coordinating deals and staying on top of deployment progress for a global partner base while eliminating inefficient manual processes.

The Impact

Improved communication, visibility, and partner support lets AdvoLogix and their partners respond more quickly to leads and provide better quality deployments for clients.

The Outcome

With their new deal registration platform built on Salesforce Communities, AdvoLogix has set the stage for added growth and valuable, long-term relationships with their partners.

Improving Deal Registration with a Global Partner Base

Jonathan Reed, AdvoLogix CEO and co-founder, explains that the company wanted to improve the deal registration process for their implementation, referral and reseller partners. They use Salesforce as their sales channel’s system of record. It’s their single system of truth for all marketing, lead gen opportunities, sales management and accounting.

One of the problems the company faced when it came to deal registration with a global partner base was the inability to effectively coordinate and communicate the status of ongoing implementations as well as transactional activity related to sales of both software and implementation services.

Typically, most businesses start with regular cadence calls with partners. “During those brief interactions, we tried to capture as much information as we could, but the accuracy and the timeliness were really dependent on how quickly we put that information into a system of record, determined the appropriate actions, and then executed on the transaction or the deployment,” Jonathan says.

“That method of phone calls, periodic data collection, and follow up work was not very effective or responsive. It led to some differences in information between what the partners had versus what we had and versus what the client had,” he explains.

It took a lot of additional effort to stay on top of ongoing projects, as well as to always know where leads were in the sales process. It made the overall process ineffective and somewhat error prone. Jonathan explains, “We partnered with HIKE2 because they were a trusted partner who had worked on many of our client deployments. They demonstrated excellent design, development, and deployment skills around Salesforce Communities.”

Experience Cloud Communities allow external users to enter a Salesforce system of record and access and update data in a very controlled and user-authenticated manner. In AdvoLogix’s case, a productive deal registration solution would allow partners to collaborate on leads and opportunities. Jonathan continues, “We chose HIKE2 because of their abilities in this technology and also because of their expertise in Communities. We knew they could finely tailor and tune a productive graphical user interface, which is not always easy using the Salesforce Community technology.”

Project Goals

Allow partners and external stakeholders to access and update Salesforce information

A user-friendly solution that would help increase productivity

Ensure the integrity of their systems and the safety of the data

Pairing Transparency with Data Protection and Security

In the past, partners had no visibility into AdvoLogix’s CRM. One of the company’s requirements was to allow both partners and external stakeholders to access and update deal information. The solution had to be both efficient and user-friendly. It had to help everyone be more productive. Finally, it needed the same levels of security and control that a standard user inside their organization would typically have, to ensure the integrity of their systems and the safety of the data.

HIKE2 was brought in because of their expertise in Salesforce Community templates, human-centered UX design, extensive cloud experience, and deep knowledge of partner relationship management.

Building a Scalable, Persona-Driven Solution

HIKE2 constructed a new persona-driven approach and designed a user experience that fit AdvoLogix perfectly. Their approach resulted in a user-friendly, modern experience for portal users.

“The deployment went very well,” Reed notes. “HIKE2 uses an iterative agile development model. They were able to quickly prototype what we were looking for, show that prototype to us, make necessary changes, and then come back with new revisions until it was really finely tuned to our exact needs.”

“They used that approach through the deployment to the initial users. And now it’s simple to roll out the portal to new users. It’s really just a matter of having the appropriate licenses on hand and clicking a few buttons — no coding required — and we can enable new partner users to use our portal effectively.”

The Impact on the Partner Relationship

“Partners can latch onto the program. They can identify with AdvoLogix and being a partner in a quality program because we provide all the tools our partners need to be successful. If they’re going to spend time working with a technology provider like AdvoLogix, they value quality delivery. I believe our partner portal has really put a face on our partner program that tells the world — we’re serious about business, we’re serious about our partners and we’re going to continue to invest in your success,” Jonathan says.

Facilitating Better Partnerships and Improved Sales Cycles

AdvoLogix has gained several benefits from their new deal registration system built on Salesforce Experience Cloud:

A streamlined user experience

AdvoLogix can now manage their entire deal flow process from beginning to end. Everything from initial lead qualification, sales activities, quoting, collateral delivery, support, and deal closing is supported in the portal. 

A Faster, More Efficient Sales Cycle

“We have shortened our sales cycle,” notes Jonathan. “Whenever you can exchange information in a timely fashion and take rapid action on anything that needs to be done, your cycle moves quicker.”

In addition to deal management, AdvoLogix’s new solution also provides a rich support experience that offers sales and marketing collateral, video content, training materials, FAQs, competitive information, and more — virtually anything and everything that a partner would need to be self-sufficient with AdvoLogix solutions.

Increased Visibility & Collaboration

“The two-way collaboration that we have with the partner portal allows us to remain in constant contact. We know where deals are and what’s needed to move them forward much more rapidly than we could in a manual, note-taking phone call.” The benefit is particularly evident with AdvoLogix’s Australian distributor reseller partner. The portal has provided a much-needed and very effective way to communicate. “It’s a perfect example of — they’re asleep when we’re up and we’re sleeping when they’re up,” Jonathan says. “That’s probably where we’ve seen some of the greatest benefits, when it comes to these time zones in South Africa, Europe, and Asia Pacific. I believe our partner portal has really put a face on our partner program that tells the world — we’re serious about business, we’re serious about our partners and we’re going to continue to invest in your success”

Jonathan Reed
CEO & Co-Founder, AdvoLogix

What’s Next?

The deal registration project has shown AdvoLogix that they now have a secure way to deliver high-value content for their partners.

Their next step is to take their content game to the next level and take full advantage of the partner portal platform.

“Content is king and we need to continue to create and deliver more of that. That’s our primary focus now that we’ve broken down the technology barriers to securely sharing more information with our partners,” says Reed.