Psion Teklogix has officially announced a program for attracting more hardware and software companies as partners.
The handheld wireless data collection manufacturer revealed the Strategic Alliance Partner Program for the Americas last week after running it quietly for several months. During
that time it signed up 27 partners including Cisio Systems.
Mississauga, Ont.-based Psion has 250 VARs including resellers, solution providers and small ISVs sellings scanners, tablets and printers, explained Allen Wall, the company’s director of North American alliances. But it realized there were major vendors who didn’t want to use their channel for Psion products it wasn’t working with.
“One of our faults is that if a technology company did not want to sell our products we didn’t have a vehicle to identify (and) bridge their solution into ours,” he said.
Indirectly, that was costing Psion partners by having fewer integrated solutions to sell.
“We had a product management group that assess the value of a solution,” he said, “but didn’t execute it at the field level.”
So it created the Strategic Alliance Partner Program to find and work with them. Wall has a staff of five plus finding to put muscle into the program.
The three-tier program (alliance, premier and elite partner)has six classifications: technology partners (such as Cisco), ISVs, large system integrators, carriers, RFID specialists and industry associations.
“The more the strategic partner invests in Teklogix the more we invest in them,” said Wall.
“We might go from as simply as assuring logos (on products) to joint planning, giving marketing funds and helping to write a marketing strategy.
“We’ve got the focus, we’ve got the attention and the manpower to do this.”
“It’s very exciting to be able to go to a small company and have them get excited about what we bring to the market,” he said.
One of the reasons Psion wanted to chalk up a large number of strategic partners before going public was to impress the system integrators and consultants its targeting. These include IBM Global Services and Accenture.
As a result of the new program, Psion will be able to move into new markets faster than before, said Wall, by working with companies that understand industry verticals and marketing strategies. That includes possibly private labeling other companies’ solutions.
Psion’s VARs will benefit because the approved solutions will be sold through the channel, Wall said.