Syscap offers annuity ingenuity with portal relaunch

Finance provider's revamped portal includes reverse-engineered quotes and help for partners offering customer finance programmes

Finance provider Syscap has revamped its finance partner programme in an effort to make it easier for resellers to get to grips with the change to annuity and subscription-based income.

Philip White, managing director at Syscap, said that the rise in subscription-based and cloud services in recent years has led to resellers having to adjust their models.

"The primary reason [for the portal revamp] is that subscriptions, cloud services and payment-over-time services are not going away. We have to empower the channel to be able to access the subscription economy in the most effective and efficient way," he explained.

"To this end, we've created programmes that help them convert annuity streams to cash. We monetise payment streams by giving resellers the money up front, and then the customer still pays monthly."

The leasing house has been in business for 27 years and focuses on providing finance for the acquisition of technology products.

"As an organisation in that space, we fund anything from 100 per cent hardware to 100 per cent software and so on. We are technology and manufacturer agnostic," said White.

Syscap was acquired by Wesleyan Bank in February 2015, and White said that was part of the reason for the portal relaunch.

"As part of the new portal, we now have privileged access to capital to deploy into the channel in the SMB space," he added.

The finance provider has over 2,000 channel partners, with 310 of those signing up to the new portal.

Another new feature on the portal allows Syscap to work with partners to run specific promotions and programmes for customers.

"If partner wants to run a zero per cent programme, there is a cost connected to that," said White (pictured). "So the reseller would effectively discount the goods, but the customer doesn't know that. The new portal allows resellers to run promotions through the scheme, with our help."

The new-look portal also includes the ability to reverse-engineer monthly payments to give a capital cost, which White said means partners can align their propositions to the subscription economy.

The programme works backwards to work out how much equipment the customer can afford, starting with the budget and then calculating the amount of equipment you could receive for that price.

"We know [our finance options] are not the knight in shining armour, but they are certainly part of an overall package of tools required," added White.

Computer and Network Consultants Ltd is one of the partners to sign up to the new portal.

Graham Lind, technical services director at the consulting firm, said: "They do all our leasing on the larger deals. It is always a pain to deal with leasing companies but they are one of the best. That's mainly because of the portal. It's the main reason we use them, because you can do a quote for the customer by banging in the customer details and pressing a button - it gives you a quote then and there.

"The first version of the programme wasn't as easy to use. We gave them feedback and they have completely rewritten it this year. As a result, they've done all the stuff we asked them to do."

Distributor Exclusive Networks uses multiple finance providers depending on the type of loan needed, and Graham Jones, managing director of the firm, said that being flexible is the key to success as customers move over to cloud and subscription-based services.

"We have a number of finance providers so that we are flexible and can go to different providers depending on what the deal is. As people move to the cloud, a lot of VARs are going to be moving from the instant gratification of selling hardware to selling a service. If they can use finance sensibly, they can actually get their margins upfront," he said.

"I think we need to be a bit more modern. In the old days, if companies only had one source of funds they might be quite restrictive of who they would lend to and what they would lend against. In the more modern day, you've got to be more flexible."