Web hosting provider Newtek Business Services announced on Monday that it has received a patent for its NewTracker Referral Processing and Tracking System. Developed internally, NewTracker is a complete customer referral, tracking and processing software.

This move comes a month after Newtek launched Adobe ColdFusion 10 web hosting plans as part of its cloud hosting products.

NewTracker integrates the secure receipts, processing, tracking and reporting of business referrals and leads. Newtek says a substantial portion of its business comes from referrals from other organizations and partners.

Newtek has developed its NewTracker system over the past eight years, according to the press release. NewTracker was designed by Craig J. Brunet, Newtek executive vice president and chief information officer, and its internal development team. The patent was filed in September 2006, according to PatentGenius.com.

Newtek says it intends to protect its intellectual property and explore commercialization opportunities of the software beyond its internal use.

While patents can certainly help validate intellectual property, many hope the patent system adapts to deter patent trolls. Last week, Rackspace responded to a patent complaint filed against it by PersonalWeb, that claimed its customer GitHub was infrining on its intellectual property.

“The ability of Newtek to efficiently and effectively process large volumes of business opportunities while maintaining the highest levels of quality control and security for businesses interested in business loans, cloud computing services, eCommerce solutions, payroll services, personal and commercial insurance, merchant processing, web services and technology solutions rests squarely on NewTracker,” Newtek chairman and CEO Barry Sloane said in a statement.

NewTracker links referring partners and Newtek together, allowing complete transparency into its back office processing.

According to the press release, NewTracker provides its partners the ability to refer clients or leads “based on an expressed need while performing virtually no underwriting or information gathering.”

“The underwriting and business intelligence is done by Newtek directly with the customer and, on a mandatory basis, is logged into the notes of our software, affording full transparency and an accounting and a compliance audit trail to all our regulated and non-regulated referral partners,” Sloane stated.

NewTracker has enabled Newtek to acquire customers in the small and medium business space at very low costs.

Staff is not compensated on commission but instead their performance is measured based upon all of the statistics and performance criteria set up by Newtek and captured by the NewTracker system.

“NewTracker has basically put a barcode on a service offering, similar to the way overnight delivery services can track a package from intake to delivery throughout their systems.  Any referring party can, on a real time, 24/7 basis, obtain an update on what we are doing with their referred customer. Many of our clients get automatic reports sent to them daily. Due to the transparency we offer, we have over the course of time achieved the highest level of customer service for our alliance partners.”