Accpac seeks more UK resellers
Accpac is attempting to woo more resellers to sell its financial software by offering product licences and free support.
Accpac is attempting to woo more resellers to sell its financial software by offering product licences and free support.
In exchange for a £3000 signing-up fee, partners will receive five-user licences of each Accpac product for their own use, as well as free sales, marketing, technical support and training. In addition, the company will go on site to help resellers during their first installations.
Cyrus Razzaghi, regional manager at Accpac Europe, said: "The company has 5500 channel partners worldwide and 30 in the UK. That has to change. The target is 200."
He claimed that the scalability of its product was also key to the vendor increasing its market share. "Pegasus, Great Plains and Sage all have either high-end or low-end speciality. While our product is used by big firms such as Lloyd's and Exxon, it can be scaled down for use by one-man operations."
But despite encouraging its business partners to adopt its application service provider (ASP) model, Razzaghi said that Accpac still expected most of its partners to work under the traditional buy-and-sell model.
"Seventy per cent of our channel works under the traditional reseller model, but that will change over time. Communication costs are still much higher than they are in the US, so until that changes the cross-over will be gradual," he said.
Accpac started out as an independent spin-off from Computer Associates but became a corporate company in its own right four years ago. It established itself as an ASP in July.
Bill Williams, managing director at Accpac channel partner System Link UK, said the company had been a "breath of fresh air" since it ramped up its UK strategy last year.
"There is going to be a rationalisation of financial software developers in the UK in the next few years because there are just too many vendors at the moment," he said. "Many of them will be taken over and an equal number will go bust. Great Plains, Accpac and Sage are the likely survivors. They will be the big boys."