We’re wrestling with a concept, and need to know if we can use authenticated sites to solve it or do we need use a customer portal which may prove to be cost prohibitive.

We’re an ad network, and have 1000 or so advertising partners which we need to pay, for displaying advertisements on their websites, on behalf of clients. These ad partners exist as a record in an object ‘ad partner’, and an ad partner can have 1 or many websites, represented as records in another object ‘partner sites’.

In process terms, the ad partner is required to take the ad (usually a banner or some graphic), put it on their site, and let us know what site and where on their site they have put the ad in terms of URL, so we know its live, and can monitor it, and pay them according to their agreed rate.

From time to time we may discontinue these ads, change them over to new ones, or give them additional ones, and so need to communicate this to them as a new ad request, changeover, or discontinuation.

We also prepare self bill invoices for them to us on their behalf, and send them a copy, before paying them at the end of the month to their registered bank details, which are held on the ‘ad partner’ record. Payment is currently handled though MS dynamics which produces the invoices and sends on a payment file to the bank. (less than perfect but thats a whole other story)

Some work flow is required between us to manage the communication, escalate failures to respond, notify of issues etc, like ‘you haven’t given us your bank details yet’, or ‘they are incorrect’, or ‘you haven’t reported an ad as live yet’ etc etc. They may also wnat to view their invoices and download them for their record.

This requires them to be users so we can expose the objects to them as an account management site, and configure the work flows.

The obvious solution is partner/customer portal licenses, however...

these interactions between us and each  ad partner are very limited, and infrequent. For example after sending them the initial request to put an ad live, they may log in a few times, and then potentially once a month to check they’ve been paid or download or pick up their invoice, or submit a case if there’s been an issue.

Also some partners may sit dormant for a long period before and between ads

Paying an ongoing license for each partner seems like a prohibitively expensive solution for such a task, and so wanted to know if the same could be achieved using ‘authenticated sites’ or some sort of pay per use.

Any thoughts on ideal solutions much appreciated.