“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together”
Even if relying on proverbial wisdom may not be practical every time, one thing is certain: going it alone is no longer in.
In a fast-paced market environment, where innovation takes root in some corner every day and competition is fierce, forward-looking companies will do well to know that the best way forward is by joining forces — through partnerships.
TrackTik’s 360° partner program affords this while bringing together the best companies and technologies to solve today’s workforce challenges. Over the years, we’ve built a robust partner network through various technology integrations and add-ons.
“Partnerships are not about holding hands to keep us from drowning in a flooded marketplace”
You know about product innovation. But have you considered solution innovation? A solution innovation offers several alternatives over an existing good solution. If TrackTik’s guarding suite elevates your security service delivery with mobile workforce management, a partner integration with say, accounts payable software extends that service to include vendor management as well. Partnerships can be thought of as a good breeding ground for solution innovation.
Why partnerships?
Through our partnerships, we’ve discovered a real differentiator at the heart of all our collaborations — a real leverage that is helping us expand our offerings to newer consumer segments. And we reckon this is true for our collaborators as well.
As with every business, it is challenging to tap into a new consumer market amidst the competition in the SaaS business. The selling game becomes even more tricky because the buying power of consumers has increased manifold, so much so that a need may unwittingly be turned into a want and vice versa — setting the stage for what we today call a ‘disruptive business’.
Partnerships help hold the fort in a disruptive market. We’ll explain the partner program that has been serving us well. Lots of positives come out of a partnership. We’d take you through our process of building a concrete partner network and the cumulative benefits that come out of it.
The TrackTik Partner Network
How does TrackTik engage companies to build a partner ecosystem? You can think of TrackTik as a central platform that supports 360° connectivity to peripheral functions, systems, and controls, which combined, help get work done and make solution innovation possible.
At the core of our partner network, we have:
- Partner-built and maintained integrations
- Partner-built add-ons and services
Through this provisioning, TrackTik has several important integrations that enable productivity. These include Smart Parking Apps and Local Security that offer parking enforcement and a live CCTV feed. In addition to TrackTik’s security workforce management software, these add-ons contribute to the overall security portfolio provided to potential clients. Basically, with these integrations, TrackTik can offer a comprehensive, workable solution that is end–to–end and completes the ‘loop’, so to speak, in security service delivery.
Likewise, integrations with Criterion and Sage Intacct for payroll and billing/invoicing enable a single workforce data flow across the ‘TrackTik-Partner’ integration platform. These, in turn, help our clients accomplish auxiliary jobs related to workforce management, including the reconciling of billing/ invoicing and payroll using that data.
In a way, partner integrations such as this complete the cycle in workforce management and offer us the added flexibility to extend security solutions to segments outside of our core customer base.
Let’s look at how they get built.
Integrations exist to help two systems interact and communicate. By interaction, we mean the sharing of data between two software systems. Why is this needed?
Very simply put, TrackTik manages all aspects of a security workforce like patrolling, guard scheduling, and checkpoint tours. But this management may also include contracts with vendors for, say, the purchase of uniforms for security guards. Usually, because purchases are made on credit, an invoice is generated, which needs to be processed to pay back the vendor at a later date.
Rather than building an application for invoice processing, we choose to integrate our software with a formidable partner software that accomplishes this. Software is an executable program that gets work done. Invoice processing software requires specific attribute values like the invoice TOTAL and ITEM LIST to execute invoicing. These values, which are nothing but purchase data on the uniforms, have to be provided by TrackTik.
Enter integration.
Through integration with a ‘partner-owned/provided’ invoice processing software, TrackTik can easily send data for direct reconciliation of purchases and final payments to vendors.
What we explained here is data transfer from one software application to another. The interface between the two applications that enables data transfer is typically called the Application Programming Interface or API.
TrackTik’s partner integrations are possible through either cloud-based, native, or third party integration connectors that link to partner-owned apps or data sources. Additionally, integrations can be achieved by leveraging TrackTik’s RESTful API to get data in and out of TrackTik. We’ll come to what RESTful means in a minute.
Our partner integrations support this transfer of data between TrackTik and connected applications. Depending on the protocol and integration setup, this data transfer may be both ways or just one way.
Coming to the technical aspect of data transfer, software applications communicate or transfer data based on a set protocol. There are several data transfer protocols like FTP (File Transfer Protocol), HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure), SCP (Secure Copy Protocol), etc.
REST API is a specific type of API that follows a certain set of constraints or guidelines to transfer data between two software applications. Also called RESTful API, it is an architecture for requesting, retrieving, and sending data between systems. The RESTful architecture can be based on any protocol, be it HTTPS, SCP, or other communication.
Refer to our partner integrations library for a complete list of all our partner-built and partner-maintained integrations that use connectors or TrackTik’s RESTful API for data transfer.
“Partnerships are your low-investment, long-term growth vehicle”
More can be done with less. But, in our case, we’d like to rephrase and say: continuous value-added security service can be offered against a base investment.
The benefits of a partnership integration are cumulative and shared between partners:
- Tap into newer consumer markets and end-user segments
- Leverage opportunity to co-sell and up-sell
- Get more value-added service & returns from a base investment
- Maintain a single flow of data — and eliminate data and functional silos
- Expand functionality and use case of core product offering
- Enable end-to-end service delivery
- Scale operations through a connected business
- Custom-build solutions for end users
- Make your SaaS offering an essential service for end-users
Partner integrations allow us and our clients to extend offerings to newer consumer markets. The scope for developing integrations is limitless and allows for solution innovation for the common challenges facing the physical security industry.
The best part is that the integrations help expand the overall functionality of TrackTik’s security workforce management software without adding to the investment costs of building additional software.
Partner integrations help TrackTik focus on the core product while adding to the functionality and scale of our offerings.
In essence, we will be building a connected business within a broader partner ecosystem where we can leverage the best technology solutions to get work done!
For more on TrackTik’s partnerships and information about our 360° partner program, contact a member of the Solutions Engineering team or raise a Professional Service request.
