They may only have CDW Canada as a channel partner in this country, but that isn’t stopping Chicago-based SpringCM from launching its on-demand electronic content management solution with SOA capabilities.
Jeff Piper, vice-president of professional services and partner development for SpringCM, said the Canadian market, with its large English-speaking customer base, is a natural extension to the company’s growth plans.
SpringCM is looking to have 100 channel partners in total in the U.S. and Canada, with up to 15 in this country.
The channel strategy focuses on pure resellers who have electronic content management (ECM) expertise, and leveraging channel partners from other on-demand vendors the company has a relationship with such as Salesforce.com and WebEx.
Partner margins differ from the 15 per cent agency fees for referrals to the 30 plus points a VAR or systems integrator can receive. Margins go up from there based on volume, Piper said.
With SpringCM leveraging both SaaS and SOA, the solution improves scalability, reduces costs by providing ECM for collaboration and document process automation, Piper said.
SpringCM has Web services that are attached to the application so any function in the application has a corresponding Web service. This enables a partner to connect with the software and either push in information or pull it out of the system, Piper said of the software’s SaaS and SOA capabilities.
The ECM solution is targeted at the mid-market or large enterprises with either a separate line of business, department or division that has autonomy for IT purchases.
“More people are looking to reduce the complexity and the risk of technology. There are no upfront costs with us,” Piper said.
Typical customers are organizations with up to 50 people.
According to Piper, the vast majority of IT budgets are spent on implementation of an on-premise solution.
“Not too much is spent on change management or business process management. In the SaaS world, implementation is a fraction of the cost,” Piper said.
More time and budget can be devoted to making real change, while a partner that has professional services can influence this change.
“If you look at the growth in software, it is in SaaS segment not the installed applications area. That is a trend (solution providers) should pay attention to. We are not trying to displace another vendor. If you got something installed from another vendor we are not trying to displace that. This is an opportunity for new sales,” Piper said.
SpringCM will also enable its channel partners to privately label its solution, but that plan is targeted for later this year.
Another aspect of SpringCM’s channel plan is working with copier vendors such as Fujitsu, Kyocera, and Ricoh.
“The challenge with them is that they are selling scanning and MFP equipment and are recognized as hardware vendors with no expertise in professional services and change management. The beauty of SpringCM is that it is simple to implement and maintain. (Customers) are used to leasing the hardware and paying a monthly fee and with SaaS the economics align,” he said.
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