Illumine Energy Wins Confidence of Prospective Customers by Implementing ZINFI Channel Marketing Automation Platform

Overview

Illumine Energy, headquartered in Kochi, India in the state of Kerala, is a top player in the renewable energy market in both India and the UAE. The company manages every facet of large-scale renewable energy projects for a variety of clients, including hospitals, shopping centers, manufacturers and other commercial buildings as well as residential customers. Illumine has relationships with a number of leading renewable energy product vendors from around the world, but its offerings extend beyond providing equipment to encompass the entire spectrum of complex project requirements, including site audit, engineering, permitting, installation, final inspection, interconnection, and monitoring and maintenance.

Challenges

Renewable energy—and particularly solar energy—represents a rapidly growing market in India, and the competition among companies like Illumine is fierce. Return on investment and long-term reliability of equipment are among the most important requirements that potential customers bring to new energy initiatives. While Illumine distinguishes itself from competitors by offering a 25-year warranty for the solar panels it installs, prospective clients can be skeptical of product warranties in a marketplace where key product information like serial numbers is often collected manually and warranty documentation can be minimal at best. Illumine was looking for a way to automate the collection of this data and generate high-quality warranty documents to give prospects confidence in the long-term viability of their projects and make the data collection process much more efficient.

Solutions

To solve this problem, Illumine recently launched a channel marketing automation platform from ZINFI, a global leader in Unified Partner Management (UPM) software offering modular solutions to a broad range of marketing challenges. Companies of all sizes can adopt ZINFI’s channel marketing software in stepwise fashion, one module at a time, to automate workflows, generate broader awareness of their offerings, and develop more efficient marketing and sales motions.

After installing the ZINFI Channel marketing automation platform, Illumine immediately began using it to create a customized workflow in which all of the solar panels it installs are scanned with a mobile device at the installation site, thereby establishing a database containing product serial numbers, manufacturing information, batch numbers, installation site and date, type of project, and other details for each project and customer. This information is not only shared with customers via the ZINFI partner portal, but can also be compiled to instantly generate a complete warranty document that customers can use to communicate with product vendors directly.

Having this information at their fingertips makes a significant difference for customers, and is a key selling point. “Our customers are reassured to know that even if Illumine is not around 10 years from now they will have all the documentation they need to pursue any warranty claims,” says Anwar Babu, Chief Technical Officer at Illumine. “The collected data is a crucial form of certification for customers, and having a way to automate the data collection and documentation processes helps us sell our products and services.”

Results

In addition to boosting the confidence of prospective customers, Illumine’s new workflow for compiling product and project information saves Illumine employees huge amounts of time. “It’s not an easy task writing down serial numbers—which are long and complicated—by hand,” says Babu. “When you have 300 panels on a project it can take a long time and people can make mistakes. With our new system, it’s easy for any employee to collect the data because the ZINFI platform is so easy to use.”

Babu says he would “absolutely” recommend the ZINFI marketing automation platform to other organizations, including customers and equipment vendors. “It’s really fantastic,” he says, noting that Illumine has used the software on around 70 projects since installing it a few months ago. “It’s wonderful because when we are talking about our product warranty with prospects we can log into the platform and show them how other customers are accessing and using the information.” Babu and Illumine are now looking ahead and exploring other ways to use the ZINFI platform to further automate and refine their sales and marketing processes.