Five portals before breakfast
Every morning someone logs in to each partner portal in turn: a car manufacturer's home charging programme, two leasing companies, a dealer group and an energy supplier. They copy new orders into your job system, then go back and mark yesterday's surveys done, upload completion photos for last week's installs, and answer a query about a customer who says nobody called.
Each portal wants the same facts in a different shape. One wants a status code, one a free-text update, one wants photos named in a particular way. When the admin person is off, partners notice within a day.
Partners built their portals for themselves
Each partner designed its portal around its own reporting. From your side, that means double entry. The information starts in your job system (survey booked, survey done, install date, completion evidence) and then has to be copied to each portal manually, because nothing connects them.
- New orders are retyped from portal to job system.
- Status updates are posted by hand, often late.
- Completion evidence is uploaded file by file.
- Each partner has its own status names and required fields.
- Partner queries arrive in the portal, not your inbox.
The cost of double entry
Admin hours that grow with every partner. Late status updates that make you look slow to partners who compare installers in their own dashboards. Retyping errors that send a fitter to the wrong address or the wrong unit. And partner allocation of future work, which often follows how well you keep their portal up to date.
Car maker and leasing programmes often run tight windows between vehicle delivery and charger install, so a late survey update can look like a missed deadline even when the work was done on time. The portal is the only evidence the partner sees.
The connectors we build
- For each partner, we look at what the portal offers: an API, a file drop, structured email notifications, or only a web screen.
- New orders are pulled in by the best available route and created as jobs, with the partner's reference, the customer details and the unit ordered. Anything ambiguous goes to a person to check.
- Your job statuses are mapped to each partner's status list once. When a job moves in your system, the matching update is sent to the portal.
- Completion evidence from your fitters is packaged in each partner's required format and uploaded, or queued for a person where the portal does not allow automation.
- Partner messages and queries are collected into one queue with the job linked, so the right person sees them.
- A daily check compares job status in your system with each portal and lists any mismatches.
| Task | Done by hand now | Done by the connectors |
|---|---|---|
| New orders | Retyped from each portal | Pulled in with partner reference |
| Status updates | Posted when someone has time | Sent when your job moves |
| Completion evidence | Uploaded file by file | Packaged per partner |
| Partner queries | Found in each portal | One queue with the job linked |
| Mismatches | Found by the partner | Daily comparison list |
Where a portal has no API, we are honest about what can be automated. Sometimes the right answer is a well-organised checklist for a person rather than fragile screen automation.
Partners see you as quick
Orders appear in your job system without anyone typing them. Partners see status updates the same day the work moves. Completion evidence arrives complete and in their format. The admin person spends their morning on the handful of genuine queries, and a holiday no longer shows up in partner dashboards.
Is this your morning?
- You log in to several partner portals every day.
- Orders are copied from portals into your job system by hand.
- Partners have told you your updates are late.
- Completion photos are uploaded one at a time.
- One person knows how each portal works.