Avnet Technology Solutions has introduced uRenew, a Web portal it says will help solution providers take advantage of recurring revenue opportunities in the form of maintenance and support services contracts with their customers.

As it exists today, uRenew provides partners information on all of their upcoming renewal opportunities, across any number of vendors. Anything that was originally sold through Avnet will appear on the portal by default, giving solution providers a view of their renewal opportunities across their business. Larry Fulop, vice president and general manager of supplier services or the Americas at Avnet Technology Solutions, said that can be a significant bit of revenues for many solution providers – in many cases, accounting for between 10 and 15 per cent of solution provider revenues.

“Avnet has made a conscious effort to increase our focus on maintenance and renewal, and one of the obvious things to us is that we need to enhance our partners’ ability to have visibility into their maintenance and renewal business,” Fulop said. “This is substantial revenue for our partners, substantial revenue for Avnet, and a strategic area for our suppliers as well.”

Before uRenew, Avnet provided solution providers with updates when renewal opportunities were upcoming, but the new service goes above that kind of service and provides what Fulop describes as “proactive quoting,” one-screen access to all renewal opportunities across all brands for all customers. It helps partners to plan their attack on the opportunity. The site also features additional depth of information from select partners who have signed on to feed into uRenew. At launch, vendors including HP, IBM, Cisco, and Oracle are feeding their own maintenance and renewal information into the portal, and Fulop said Avnet will be working to grow the number of vendors providing that connection.

Beyond the tactical planning of renewal campaigns, Fulop said one of the “biggest values” of the tool is in its reporting capabilities, including executive summaries that can show how much revenue is available in maintenance and renewals for a solution provider, and how that partner is doing on closing that business.

“We get asked these kinds of questions constantly,” Fulop said.

The reports will cover such issues as how and why solution providers lose deals, and the reporting will also be available to participating vendor partners who will “have the capability to see what they can help close,” Fulop said.

The site works hand-in-hand with Avnet’s recently-launched Maintenance Services Now offering, under which the distributor offers resellers outsourced sales around maintenance and renewal opportunities.

“We call on behalf of partners and become a selling arm for them,” Fulop said.

The site is available today off Avnet’s main Channel Connection partner portal site. While the site is launched today, Fulop suggested that Avnet already has plans for additional functionality, including support for partners adding services related to products not initially sold through Avnet, consolidating support and maintenance contracts for end user customers, and eventually automating the sales cycle for solution providers.