Great Plains forges alliance with Siebel

Vendor enlists partner in assault on front office sector.

Great Plains resellers will soon be in a position to attack the front office market after the vendor signed a deal with Siebel.

The Great Plains Siebel Front Office Series product comes in the wake of a similar agreement between Siebel and ERP vendor JD Edwards, signed last month.

Xavier Sentuc, international alliances manager at Siebel, said the agreement with JD Edwards would not clash with the Great Plains eEnterprise 5.5 product because the vendors were "only scratching the surface" of the growing mid-market area.

He added that the main reason for the alliance with Great Plains was its indirect sales strategy. "Not only can we build on the skills and services Great Plains has to offer, but its resellers will also give us greater reach," Sentuc claimed.

Neil Robertson, managing director of Great Plains, said it would begin introducing the Microsoft-based product to the channel at the end of October.

He added that Great Plains was in the process of preparing to launch a skills initiative to enable the channel to take advantage of the product, but admitted that nothing had been finalised.

Robertson said Great Plains would not engage Microsoft's extensive channel, but still wanted to add up to 15 more UK partners to the current 45, to cope with the estimated 500 per cent growth in business generated by the integrated Siebel product.

"I would not let certain Great Plains resellers loose with some products. There will also be a lot of cost involved. But the feedback has been good - in fact, partners have been pushing us to get a move on."

David Rankin, managing director of Great Plains reseller Williams Allan IT Consultancy, added that he expected business to grow 100 per cent because of the introduction of the integrated product.