Navision Canada is looking for new channel partners to sell its latest software, but making the grade isn’t easy.
The Toronto-based integrated business solutions provider launched Navision Attain on Tuesday. The package targets mid-market companies (revenue between US$5 million and US$250 million) and includes customer relationship management, supply chain collaboration and financial management.
John Macdonald, general manager, Navision Canada, says there are a number of benefits to becoming a certified reseller. He says it offers marketing programs, channel management and technical support and training.
“All training is done free of charge,” Macdonald says. “We don’t make money for training our partners. We believe it’s integral to our success and the success of our solution centres to have that training. We also don’t charge to become a Navision solution centre.”
According to Macdonald, the first step is getting a business plan approved. Once the business end is taken care of, resellers must pass several kinds of training: sales, implementation, deployment and consulting. Once five people have been certified, a company can call itself a Navision solution centre.
“We keep the bar fairly high because we need to make sure that our partners are all highly certified and have a high level of training,” says Macdonald.
“We’ve invested over $500,000 in our Navision practice both with people and the training that are associated with that. Navision is definitely is the most rigourous company that we’ve dealt with in terms of the standards required to become certified,” says Raymond Chesher, vice-president sales, Blue Habanero Inc.
The Mississauga, Ont.-based company jumped through the hoops and has nothing but good things to say about Attain. Paul Watzinger, president of Blue Habanero, says most of the 27 employees completed the training in about 120 days. Chesher adds Attain filled it’s most pressing need when it went looking for a mid-market enterprise resource planning platform.
“Often in the past you’d have to sell the customer this big, massive software and the concern was always, ‘We’re only using this piece of it. Can’t you sell me just that piece?’ It was only until we found Navision that we actually had an answer. You can buy just the pieces you need and as you grow with the application (and) add the pieces on that are required,” says Chesher.
