JD Edwards looks to court Vars

JD Edwards has become the latest ERP vendor to break its traditional direct sales model by appointing five resellers to service medium-sized UK enterprises.

Jade Enterprise Solutions, Catalyst Solutions, Dunedin, Olympic Amis and M2 have been appointed in a single-tier strategy that will cover the UK geographically and in specialist markets.

John Simmonds, director of alliances at JD Edwards, told PC Dealer: 'We are keen to avoid the mistakes made by other ERP vendors that have established an indirect channel, so we have spent the past nine months looking at the market opportunities and the sort of resellers we want.'

Simmonds said the vendor was targeting companies with a turnover of between #20 million and #150 million and up to 10 resellers would eventually work with the vendor's direct sales force to generate leads for its OneWorld ERP package. He added that JD Edwards would work to eliminate channel conflict 'at all costs'.

Clare Findlay, group operations director at Catalyst Solutions, said: 'We needed to be reassured that there would be no conflict with the direct sales force, that it could pass leads to us and vice versa. We also wanted reassurance that there would be no intra-channel conflict because our focus needs to be on the customer, not on what competitors are doing.'

Steve Robinson, managing director of JD Edwards reseller Jade, said: 'Past experience has taught us that small companies have similar issues to large enterprises, but they appreciate the closeness of a reseller.'

Anne-lees Wang, director of European software research at IDC, expressed surprise that JD Edwards had not established an indirect channel sooner.