Tiremetrix Launches TPMS MANAGER™ - The Tire Industry’s Most Comprehensive TPMS Management System
The Company
Tiremetrix LLC is a software development company based in Detroit Michigan that specializes in data-driven information products for the automotive industry. Tiremetrix launched its first product, TPMS MANAGER™, in Q4 of 2011, which provides the most comprehensive information related to TPMS service within the tire industry.
The Product – TPMS MANAGER™
TPMS MANAGER™ is an innovative online software product that gives auto repair shops critical information related to the servicing of vehicles equipped with direct measuring tire pressure monitoring systems. Using a 
hybrid of interactive cataloging, practical “how to” instructions, reporting and intelligent notifications the TPMS MANAGER™ is the most comprehensive TPMS management solution available in the market.
TPMS service can be challenging and frustrating. Too much time can be spent searching for the right part, and getting the vehicle turned out of the repair shop quickly and safely. Having the right TPMS information available conveniently is critical. TPMS MANAGER™ enables auto repair shops to excel at TPMS servicing, gaining more customers, selling more TPMS sensors, and improving overall efficiency and customer service at the same time.
The Need
The challenges for bringing an online Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) product like TPMS MANAGER™ to market are the same as most SaaS products: how do you allow the marketing and sales team to have control over pricing and products and track different promotions, without changing code or rewriting the checkout pages every time there is a new offer? Furthermore, how to do this on a tight deadline? What about any issues with being deployed in the cloud? 
What tools will be necessary for customer service?
In addition, Tiremetrix had an aggressive timeline for launching both the product and the ecommerce website. TPMS MANAGER™ was deployed into the Microsoft Windows Azure cloud environment. Understanding this, Tiremetrix sought to find a partner that was both savvy with the cloud and ecommerce. Further, since TPMS MANAGER™ is delivered using a SaaS business model, it was critically important that the chosen ecommerce partner was able to accommodate SaaS recurring billing and subscription management scenarios.
The Solution
The Accumulus team worked with Tiremetrix to implement an automated recurring billing and checkout process on www.tpmsmanager.com. Accumulus was used to create a fully integrated recurring billing solution that provides a seamless user experience to the customer and at the same time manages all the complexity of the billing cycle - including PCI compliance - allowing Tiremetrix staff to concentrate on their core business. This includes a customer service portal that the Tiremetrix customer service staff can use to resolve customers’ issues without any custom development or special integration.
The Implementation
Tiremetrix utilized a number of important aspects of the Accumulus Subscription Commerce Platform, including:
- Usage Based Pricing (Number of Service Locations)
- Free Trials
- Customized Notifications
- Hosted Signup Forms
- Auto-Provisioning (Auto-Enabling/Disabling Access)
Tiremetrix charges based on the number of service locations that need access to the TPMS MANAGER™. Using the Accumulus provisioning capability, Tiremetrix is able to automatically collect the needed information on signup and use it to automatically activate and provision access of the TPMS MANAGER™ for the customer for the right number of locations. The information is securely stored alongside the customer’s subscription and changes are reflected on the customized monthly statements. Statements are automatically generated and send to the customer by Accumulus on behalf of Tiremetrix at the end of each customer’s billing cycle.
In addition to full signup, Tiremetrix allows their customers to experience the service for free for a limited period of time. Using a “freemium” model, Tiremetrix can dramatically lower the barrier of adoption for TPMS MANAGER by getting potential customers into the product experience with minimum effort on their part. Tiremetrix utilizes a plug-in hosted upgrade dialog to upgrade free trial customers into paying customers. The plug-in hosted upgrade dialog keeps credit card data entry outside of TPMS MANAGER, easing PCI burden on Tiremetrix, while still ensuring a seamless user experience.
The following diagram shows how Tiremetrix integrated and utilizes the cloud hosted software-as-a-service Accumulus Subscription Commerce Platform:
The Benefits
The benefits of going with the Accumulus Subscription Commerce solution included:
- Reduced time to market
- Increased efficiency through full customer lifecycle automation
- Ability to easily evolve pricing and promotions
- Reduced PCI compliance burden
- Pricing that matches Software-as-a-Service
Anyone who has ever looked at the design complexities of recurring billing and the numerous issues of protecting customer credit card information realizes the difficulties involved. By working with the Accumulus team Tiremetrix significantly reduced the time to market and effort required to implement a secure, full featured solution. Even when new features were required, the Accumulus team worked tirelessly to meet the requirements of TPMS MANAGER™.
About Accumulus
Founded in 2009, Accumulus addresses the complexities of subscription management and customer lifecycle processes that online companies face with subscription-based pricing models. The Accumulus Subscription Commerce Platform is a cloud-based software-as-a-service solution which includes subscription billing, customer lifecycle management and back-office automation tools. It easily integrates with customers’ existing IT infrastructure and online systems to help businesses manage and automate everything from customer sign-up and activation to billing and payment processing. It can be implemented in a matter of days or weeks and offers affordable pay-as-you-go pricing that is aligned with today’s cloud based business. Accumulus has anticipated all of the impediments that exist for software, service, and content companies moving to recurring revenue models.