Hand on your Heartland

US reseller organisation Heartland Technology Group is spreading the love, reports Kayleigh Bateman

From Left to Right (Back Row) Dave Sobel, James Cash, Richard Tubb

VAR consortium the Heartland Technology Group (HTG) is kick-starting its plans for international growth with a UK operation. Announcing its UK group ­ dubbed HTG11 ­ last October with seven members, HTG is on the hunt for more local resellers.

With some 200 members across North America, HTG was founded in 2001 as a means for resellers to share ideas, best practices and business opportunities. The consortium is divided into smaller groups of about 12 VARs each, that meet each quarter to update fellow members. Each member company is an independent location that operates as part of the HTG network.

Arlin Sorensen, founder of the organisation and chief executive of Iowa-based reseller Heartland Technology Solutions, said the group chose to expand to the UK because members have more customers doing business overseas than in the US and are therefore seeking partnerships.

“We have already had two or three instances where US partners needed someone on the ground in the UK for fulfilment,” he said.

“One of our US partners in New York City needed someone in London to help with a server roll-out. Another member, in Wisconsin, also needed help there.”

Heartland Technology Solutions is an authorised Microsoft Gold Certified Partner for security.

Channel benefits
Both HTG and UK-based HTG11 have the same yearly curriculum for their members.
For the first quarter of 2009, members have discussed and constructed a business plan and for the second quarter, devised a leadership plan.

UK and US members met in Dallas for an April summit. A separate meeting in July will address a life plan. Then, members will think up some good reasons for getting up in the morning ­ deciding which direction they plan to drive their businesses.

The closing quarter of 2009 will see the group members invent some personal disaster recovery plans, in case something happens to the owners of the businesses.

In addition to quarterly meetings, each group has a monthly conference call and individual members keep in contact on a daily basis via email.

Dave Sobel, chief executive of Washington, DC-based VAR Evolve Technologies and facilitator of HTG11, said: “If you truly want to be successful you have to know what would happen to your business if you were to die or become ill. We build a life plan because although business growth is important we believe in putting life first and then work.

“We got involved in HTG in the US about two years ago. It is
basically a group of resellers that get together to act like a board of directors.

“The members share financial information and best practices, for example. Through the ideas generated we have significantly grown our businesses.”

More hours
Sobel said that, through meetings with HTG, Evolve decided to
collaborate with a partner on the US’s Pacific coast ­ effectively extending the VAR’s business day, and therefore its time to make sales, by three hours.

“We want to continue to widen the partner pool and to continue with the idea of extending work hours. Business is not done in one place any more; more and more partners are collaborating overseas,” said Sobel.

“We also take part in consulting ventures on the best way to grow a business. If a member suggests an idea to grow their own business, we help them highlight things they may not have noticed. We ask questions such as ‘does this match up with your core business’.

"This supports the member and may save them a considerable amount of unnecessary pain.”

Intra-member support and advice happens in swings and roundabouts. “One member helped my businesses with bundling SharePoint in an ‘eloquent’ way. He gave me all the material I needed and I just tailored it to suit my business. It saved me so much time and money not having to do all the marketing from scratch,” said Sobel.

HTG has no corporate backing; the group has been supported by what Sobel referred to as “the energy among its members”.

He added: “In the US we look for members at least 250 miles apart so there is no competition. However, this model would not work in the UK as the geographies are different. In the UK, we will be careful to recruit by region and ensure there is no overlap.”

Both HTG and HTG11 also take part in business role-playing exercises, where one member acts as a customer and the others act as representatives for their own businesses. The businesses pitch their ideas to the customer, who eventually chooses a winner for the contract. The group then discusses why that particular business won the bid and why the others did not.

The perks of membership
Chris Timm, managing director of one of the first UK resellers to join the IT peer group in October, TCG Computer Services, said he thought joining the group was a great idea.

“TCG is quite active in the SME community and the HTG organisation cropped up as a rapidly developing idea,” said Timm. “We all sign an NDA when we join, so we can safely share information.”

HTG11 had already supported and advised him on the right time to take on a new member of staff.

“The group helped me work on my business and growth plans, suggesting whether or not it was too early to bring another person on board,” said Timm.

“Since then my turnover has grown and TCG is just about ready for another employee.”

Timm said HTG members set each other various goals and objectives. When they meet up they examine how far along the road each business has come and whether they have achieved their objectives. If goals are not reached, the group looks at why and figures out some ways to improve.

“In round-table discussions, we share which marketing techniques we used to win our last five clients, for example. Each business shares a best-practice idea at every meeting, as every company has value to offer to the other members,” he said.

Occasionally, they each put £40 into a pot along with a new idea on how to drive business. The member with the best idea wins the money and the group gains information that they consider to be worth more than £40 on how to improve their business.

The group has strategic partnerships with vendors, such as Microsoft, HP, SonicWALL and 3Com. It also gets support from small business sales and service group, the VentureTech Network.

Success by association
Richard Tubb, IT consultant at Microsoft small business specialist Netlink IT, said: “[We] discovered HTG at Microsoft’s worldwide partner conference in July. We met some other members there too.

“We quickly realised there are a number of benefits to associating successful businesses with other successful businesses. Some members in the group achieve £1m annual turnover.”

Tubb said joining HTG11 has opened the reseller’s eyes to what can be achieved, by discussing things such as the pros and cons of mergers and hiring more staff.

“One idea that has thoroughly helped Netlink IT was based on having a tighter control of our finances. Previously we may have been lacking in certain areas. The other businesses revealed how they conduct weekly reports, which we have taken on board, as well as implementing a system to track overdue invoices,” said Tubb.

Vijay Singh Royait, technical director at software outsourcing firm and HTG11 member Ardent-Isys, said everyone in the group is accountable to everyone else.

“There are many peer-to-peer networking groups in the Microsoft small business community,” he said. “HTG11 offers the next step beyond that. It is a group that focuses on developing and growing your business.”

As with NetlinkIT, Ardent-Isys discovered HTG at Microsoft’s worldwide partner conference last year.

“Microsoft was promoting HTG to its business specialist community,” said Royait. “The group has helped Ardent-Isys organise a structure for its business processes; for example, for its financial management and revenue growth achieved each month. We have rebuilt our business plan around this.”

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