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Service

Dealer portal development

For network directors, franchise managers and marketing heads at brands that sell or operate through dealers and franchisees, who need leads, assets, orders, training, acknowledgements and audits to live in one portal shaped around how their network is actually organised.

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The problem

What goes wrong today

Where it usually starts

A brand with ninety dealers runs its network through email, a shared drive and a spreadsheet of territories that was accurate when the last regional manager left.

  • A lead comes in through the brand website; the marketing coordinator looks up the postcode, finds the dealer, forwards the email and hopes.
  • Nobody knows whether the dealer called the customer, and when the customer complains to head office that nobody did, there is no record to check.
  • Two dealers argue over a border town because the territory map lives in two versions.

Where it gets harder

Marketing assets are the same shared drive, so dealers use last year's campaign on this year's product and a logo that was retired, and when head office pushes a new campaign the brand standards are explained in a PDF nobody opens.

  • Dealers order point-of-sale material and demonstration stock by email, and head office keys the orders into its own system.
  • Training is run in sessions whose attendance is a sign-in sheet, so the brand cannot say which dealer staff are certified to sell the new range.
  • Announcements go out by email; the one about a product recall needs every dealer principal to confirm they have read it, and the coordinator chases ninety replies by hand.
  • Regional managers visit dealers with a paper audit checklist whose results are typed up weeks later, and the network director cannot see which dealers are converting leads, which are behind on training and which have failed an audit twice.

Scope of the service

What the build covers

A custom dealer or franchise portal build normally covers:

  • Dealer accounts with territories defined by postcode areas or regions Tiers that decide what each dealer may see and order, and staff logins under each dealer principal
  • Lead distribution That assigns each enquiry from the brand site or campaigns to the dealer whose territory it falls in, with a follow-up status the dealer must update and escalation when nothing happens within the time the brand sets
  • A marketing asset library with usage rules Campaign dates, versions and download records
  • Order placement to head office for point-of-sale material Demonstration stock or products, with allocations per tier
  • Training modules With completion and certification status per member of dealer staff and expiry dates
  • Announcements with acknowledgement tracking So a recall notice shows exactly which principals have confirmed reading it
  • Brand standards audits run By regional managers on a tablet with photographs, scores and actions
  • Dashboards per dealer and per region covering leads Conversion, orders, training and audit results

How discovery works

Discovery walks through the network with you: how territories are defined and how disputes are resolved, where leads come from and what counts as followed up, what dealers may order and whether allocations apply, which training leads to certification and how long it lasts, which announcements need acknowledgement, what an audit checks and what happens after a fail, and what regional managers and the director need to see. Each becomes a named stage in the scope document: onboard dealer, distribute leads, orders placed, training and acknowledgements, performance review.

Deliberately out of scope

  • The dealers' own retail or workshop systems, franchise fee invoicing and royalty accounting beyond recording what was ordered, and the brand's own ERP, which receives orders from the portal rather than being replaced. Certification and audit results are records the brand keeps
  • The portal does not claim that a dealer is compliant with anything outside the brand's own standards

When the scope grows

Scoping scenario

A brand with ninety dealers in three tiers, territories by postcode, leads from the website and two campaign platforms, orders flowing to an ERP, certification that expires annually and audits by eight regional managers is a different build from a franchise of twelve outlets with a single asset library, and the scope document will say so.

Deliverables

What you receive

  • Discovery notes from a walk-through of the network, the territory map, the lead sources, the asset drive and a sample audit
  • A written scope document naming each stage from dealer onboarding to performance review, the ERP exchange and what is excluded
  • Design of the dealer home page, the lead follow-up view, the asset library, the training record and the audit on a tablet
  • The build, deployed to your hosting or ours
  • Migration of dealers, territories, staff, assets, training records and open leads from spreadsheets and the shared drive, where relevant
  • Order exchange with head office systems set up and reconciled against a sample month
  • Training for head office administrators, regional managers and a pilot group of dealer principals, with a short written guide
  • Handover material and full ownership of the source code and your data

Process

How a project runs

Each stage maps onto the project view in your client panel. Durations are set in your proposal, never on this page.

  1. Onboarding

    Access to the dealer list, territory map, lead sources, the asset drive, training records and any head office system orders should reach.

    Project stage: Onboarding

  2. Planning

    Discovery with the network director, a regional manager, marketing and two dealer principals; territory rules, lead escalation, tiers and the scope document are agreed with milestones.

    Project stage: Planning

  3. Design

    Clickable designs of the dealer home page with open leads, the asset library with usage rules, the training record and the audit on the tablet regional managers carry.

    Project stage: Design

  4. Development

    Built in stages: dealers, territories and staff first, then leads and the asset library, then orders, training and announcements, then audits and dashboards.

    Project stage: Development

  5. Client review

    A pilot region runs live leads through the portal, dealers place real orders, a regional manager completes an audit on site and head office compares the results with the current method.

    Project stage: Client review

  6. Revisions

    Territory edge cases, escalation timings, tier permissions and audit scoring are adjusted from the review and re-checked against the scope document.

    Project stage: Revisions

  7. Ready for launch

    Dealers, territories and assets migrated, the order exchange verified, dealer logins issued region by region, checklist signed off.

    Project stage: Ready for launch

  8. Delivered

    The network runs on the portal; optional maintenance and hosting continue under their own agreement.

    Project stage: Delivered

Integrations

Commonly integrated

Systems this kind of business usually asks us to connect. Each integration is confirmed during discovery; none is assumed.

  • Brand website and campaign platforms supplying leads
  • ERP and order management systems receiving dealer orders and returning stock and dispatch
  • CRM platforms where the brand already tracks customers
  • Digital asset management systems holding the master brand files
  • Learning platforms where training content already lives, with completion returned to the portal
  • Electronic signature services for franchise agreements and acknowledgements that need a signature
  • Email and SMS services for lead alerts, announcements and escalations
  • Mapping services for territory definition and the dealer locator

How we would approach it

Worked example

Concept demo

A ninety-dealer network with annual certification

The situation

A brand with ninety dealers in three tiers forwarded leads by hand, kept assets on a shared drive and ran audits on paper.

Why it is a custom build

The reason this needs a custom build is the lead assignment with escalation and the ERP order exchange, both of which depend on rules and systems particular to this brand.

The scope we would propose

  • Territories by postcode area with a single map head office owns and a dispute log
  • Leads from the website and two campaign platforms assigned automatically, with a follow-up status the dealer must set and escalation to the regional manager after the period the brand chooses
  • An asset library with campaign dates so retired material disappears from dealers on the end date
  • Orders for point-of-sale material and demonstration stock with allocations per tier, pushed to the ERP
  • Training modules with certification that expires annually and a dashboard of who is current
  • Announcements with acknowledgement tracking for recall notices
  • Audits on a tablet with photographs, scoring and actions that the dealer sees and must close
  • Dashboards per dealer, region and tier

Concept demo: a scoping scenario written to show how we would approach the work. It is not a delivered client project.

Pricing

What affects the price

Every proposal is priced on scope. These are the factors that move it most for this kind of build.

  • Number of dealers, territories, tiers and dealer staff logins
  • Lead sources and the assignment and escalation rules
  • Asset library size, usage rules and whether a digital asset management system is involved
  • Ordering through the portal, allocations per tier and the head office system orders flow to
  • Training modules hosted in the portal or in an existing learning platform, and certification expiry
  • Announcements with acknowledgement or signature
  • Audit templates, scoring and action tracking
  • Hosting choice: your own hosting or ours

Start from a package

Dealer franchise portal package

Dealer accounts with territories and tiers, lead distribution with follow-up tracking, marketing asset library, orders to head office, training and certification records, acknowledgements, audits and dealer dashboards.

Custom build
View the package

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

How do you decide between a custom build and the package?

Discovery compares how your network is run with what the dealer and franchise portal package does through configuration. A network with a modest number of dealers, leads from one source, an asset library and training hosted in the portal usually fits the package. Orders flowing to an ERP, leads from several platforms with escalation rules, or an existing learning platform point to custom work, and we say which before anything is quoted.

How are leads assigned to dealers?

By territory. Each lead carries a postcode or region, the portal finds the dealer whose territory covers it and assigns the lead with an alert. The dealer must set a follow-up status; if nothing happens within the period you set, the regional manager is told. Border and overlap rules are agreed in discovery and recorded in the scope document.

Can dealers order products through the portal?

Yes, within what you allow per tier. Orders for point-of-sale material, demonstration stock or products are placed in the portal and either handled by head office there or passed to your ERP or order system, which is integration work scoped per system.

Does the audit module certify that dealers meet our standards?

It records what your regional managers observed against the checklist you define, with photographs, scores and the actions raised, and tracks whether the dealer closed them. Whether a dealer meets the standard is the judgement of the person auditing; the portal keeps the record.

Who owns the system afterwards?

You do. Source code and all data, including the asset library and every audit, are handed over at delivery. Hosting and maintenance are optional, separately agreed and the portal can move to another provider.

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