Rhipe provide licensing, business development and knowledge services that support service providers, system integrators and software vendors accelerate the adoption of the cloud by end customers.

With the acceleration of the Cloud economy, customers now look to their service providers to keep them current and competitive and deliver the best end-user experience through the application of multiple cloud solutions. For many service providers that means a rapid build out of a hybrid cloud portfolio combining on premise solutions with integrated private and public cloud offerings.

To embrace this business opportunity, Rhipe has invested in a full digital transformation of services over the last 12 months, to deliver intelligent billing, provisioning and support systems backed by new marketing-as-a-Service, support-as-a-service and consulting-as-a-service offerings.

Driving the transformation is Rhipe’s CTO Cameron McFie and what his colleagues call a ‘roll up your sleeves leadership’. He has championed automation across all business units – customer service, licensing, billing, support and marketing – and improved the customer experience to deliver a higher touch service for the company’s partner ecosystem and in turn driven down overall operating costs.

All-in-one

His IT team also designed, developed and deployed an integrated multi-vendor partner portal called The Prime Portal. This required the consolidation of six legacy portals into one platform, which serves as a ‘virtual account manager’ and allows partners to manage all their licensing and provisioning themselves, including integration with Rhipe’s billing services, and integrate their internal systems with Rhipe’s APIs.

“Cameron’s implementation of an iterative, Agile development environment, his astute leadership and hands on approach has ensured the successful deployment of all key business objectives,” says his chief operating officer Dawn Edmonds.

“He brought with him a fresh approach to technology-driven productivity and a vision to build out a new products-based business within Rhipe. The pace with which he has been able to deliver on this vision is testament to his capability as a technology leader.”

Automating the partner on-boarding process has reduced a very complex and cumbersome partner experience that could take up to 72 hours to complete down to a 10 to 15 minute process.

Prior to his arrival in 2015, the company were working with numerous legacy systems and little automation across complex, multi-vendor licensing, provisioning and billing. The company said its partners could now start reselling subscription licenses within five minutes of logging into the website.

In addition, by automating the management of price lists for all partners and vendors across the channel, Rhipe has reduced administration costs for that function by more than 30 per cent.

Beyond the curve

“While we always thought Rhipe was slightly ahead of the curve when it came to systems and processes for subscription licensing, Cameron’s arrival gave us a lesson in what ‘ahead of the curve’ really means,” adds Edmonds.

“Within a year he introduced completely new and innovative design principles, hired leading edge talent to drive implementation and kick started our development team into a true Agile methodology framework.”

The company is now experimenting with machine learning to deliver next logical purchase mapping. This initiative will drive both the upsell of vendor products and boost cross-selling into other vendor portfolios. They’re also exploring the use of voice commands in the portal – using natural language to perform search and lookup functions.

Rhipe’s chief commercial officer Warren Nolan said: “Cameron’s drive for innovation and ability to capitalise on the use of technology to meet new business opportunities, combined with a keen eye on budget has meant he has consistently delivered beyond expectations and ensured maximum return on investment.”

George Nott