ERP vendors employ a number of sales channel strategies to bring their ERP products to the mid market. There is no common theme. Some sell direct, and others use a reseller channel.
The industry has applied many different labels to the reseller community such as Value Added Resellers (VAR), Systems Integrators (SI), and Independent Software Vendors (ISV). For this article we will call them ERP resellers because they all resell a major ERP software product.
Most resellers in the midmarket have a relationship with only one vendor and often specialize in only one product. But there are resellers that may have certification in more than one product from the same vendor and in a few cases may represent multiple products from multiple vendors.
These ERP resellers usually have consultants on their staff that has been certified in one or more products. These consultants facilitate ERP implementation projects by working with the client team. This service is the primary revenue source for the reseller. The size of the consulting staff can vary significantly from only a few dozen to hundreds.
The reseller has a sales organization that sells the ERP vendor product supported by sales channel management at the vendor. The reseller may have only a few sales rep or several in different geographies. The ERP vendors share the ERP license revenue with the reseller, which is another revenue source.
In the last few years ERP vendors and their resellers have become more solution oriented by specializing in versions of the software for a vertical industry. They have done this by focusing their sales effort on a vertical industry and at times offering additional software they wrote specifically for industry function
Geographic coverage is important to the reseller world. Often the ERP vendors dictate geographic territories.
At Ultra we look at all these variables for our clients in ERP selection projects:
- Who are the resellers?
- What is their vertical industry focus
- What are their product certifications?
- What is their size?
- What is their geographic coverage?
In upcoming blogs, we will introduce many of the top resellers for the popular ERP vendors: SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, Infor and Sage. These blogs will provide answers to the above questions.
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