Odin Partnership ProgramODIN Offers Money-Back Guarantee to Resellers
The program would allow software providers to install ODIN's RFID solutions, with the RFID company providing training and support assistance.
By Claire Swedberg
July 19, 2011—RFID solutions firm ODIN is launching a partner program for value-added resellers (VARs) that enables them to receive training and potential customer leads for a one-time fee. According to ODIN, this fee would be reimbursed if a partner were unable to gain a new RFID client within one year of enrolling in ODIN's Preferred RFID Partner Program.
The program is the result of seven months of development by ODIN, says Patrick J. Sweeney II, the company's CEO, and is designed to provide RFID expertise to VARs that, despite knowing their clients and various industries well, have little specific experience with radio frequency identification. The solution signals a paradigm shift, as ODIN had previously competed with VARs to provide an EPC Gen 2 RFID solution to customers in a variety of industries.
Instead, the new partnership program is designed to help VARs with limited RFID experience that sell software to their clients. By using ODIN's workflow development kit (including the RFID operating system software itself, as well as installation training), those VARs could integrate ODIN's software into a client's existing system.
According to Sweeney, ODIN's RFID software solutions—which include the EasyEdge operating system, the EasyMonitor automated RFID monitoring and alerting system, EasyTAP software, and Intelligent Asset Management (I AM) software—are currently in use by customers in the health-care sector, as well as by government agencies and organizations that need to track IT assets. For ODIN, he says, the more challenging solutions are those that fall outside of his company's expertise.
"If someone calls from retail or logistics or construction," Sweeney states, "we don't have the deep level of knowledge in those areas." The problem for such customers, he indicates, is that the VARS with which they work may have a strong understanding of their industry, but lack experience using RFID. "What we ended up doing was either competing with or butting heads with experts who know the business really well, but not necessarily RFID."
The Preferred RFID Partner Program, Sweeney says, allows ODIN's RFID expertise to be combined with a software provider's or integrator's understanding of a particular customer.
In December 2010, ODIN purchased RFID middleware and hardware company Reva Systems (see ODIN Acquires Reva Systems), thereby providing ODIN with more direct access to clients that utilize EPC Gen 2 RFID technology. The company then spent the next seven months building a program through which VARs could provide an RFID solution to their clients using ODIN's RFID platform. ODIN hired sales director Grant Wagner to lead its worldwide sales, and to develop partnerships with software companies. Wagner, Sweeney says, "put in a great infrastructure around training, marketing and material." ODIN deems the result a revenue-guarantee program, he adds, because if the arrangement fails to yield RFID business for a participant within one year, ODIN will reimburse that company's partnership fee.
To join the program, a VAR can visit the Preferred RFID Partner Program section of ODIN's Web site and download an application that it would then need to fill out and return via e-mail. If accepted into the program, the VAR would pay a fee that varies depending on the company's size and location, after which its personnel could attend a training session at ODIN's Ashburn, Va., headquarters, in order to learn how ODIN's software would be integrated into the existing IT system of a VAR's customer. In addition, ODIN will provide the partner with a list of recommended RFID customers within its geographic setting and its area of expertise.
"In the past," Sweeney explains, "we had people coming in saying, 'We've been working with company X for 15 years, and have a good relationship.'" However, he notes, VAR X may not have had experience with RFID. "Now, we have a mechanism where [the VAR] can come to us and we partner with them—not compete."
ODIN completed a beta training session with several partners in May of this year, and refined the training process based on comments from those who attended the training. One such partner is Illinois technology integrator Miles Technologies. The company's participation in ODIN' program, says Tom O'Boyle, Miles Technologies' corporate VP, "helps authenticate Miles Technologies as a leader in the RFID industry, and will help differentiate our company" from other VARs providing RFID solutions.
The partnership program "is leveraging the ODIN brand name in helping to capture new opportunities," O'Boyle says, adding, "the customer gets the best of both worlds—ODIN's technically superior software products, and our experience and expertise to provide a complete solution."
ODIN's next training session will be held in late September, Sweeney says, after which the sessions will be offered quarterly. What's more, if a VAR is a large company with too many sales employees to send to the Virginia training program, ODIN will send a representative to that company's facilities to provide training. ODIN will also assign a representative to continue a relationship with that partner, aiding the firm if it requires assistance in developing and installing a system for one of its customers