AnyWare Group, an information and communications technology company based in Saint John, N.B., is working to further scale its business this year by focusing its efforts on its partner recruitment and channel strategy across Canada and the U.S.
The company’s flagship product, its Role Oriented Access Management system (ROAM), is a secure remote access and communication solution that features what Gerry Verner, CEO of AnyWare Group, calls a clientless architecture. It’s a solution, he says, that does not require a software download and has been successful in the healthcare sector. Up until last fall, the company had mostly been selling direct.
“We’re still selling direct but we need to focus on the channel,” Verner said. “We currently have about half a dozen channel partners in North America. We’re looking for partners who sell technology into the healthcare field and who have relationships in other verticals such as financial or legal.”
AnyWare Group has set a goal of adding 10 partners this year and is looking to increase its partner community every year, Verner said. Dan Keddy, partner relationship manager at AnyWare Group, said the company also has a partner program in place.
“We have a tiered program for referrals and our consulting partners,” Keddy said, “We also have a sales agent model level and a reseller/hybrid SI, for those partners who act like an extended member of our sales group. Margins in this program range anywhere between 10 to 40 per cent because we want to make them lucrative enough to make partners want to work with us.”
Verner explains ROAM, which is deployed as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) business model, allows its users to easily access their centrally stored information, using a Web-based interface, from anywhere, anytime as long as users have an Internet connection. The solution, he said, also features administration capabilities, auditing and reporting, in addition to other security features.
In the healthcare sector, Verner said those who work with ROAM, namely healthcare workers and physicians, can remotely access their information systems by connecting to the hospital they work at, wherever they may be. ROAM, he continues, has also been extended to reach customers on the patient level with its chronic disease management solution, where patients can log into a secure system to chart their health information, and alerts can be sent to their physicians.
Because the solution is deployed using a SaaS model, partners are offered greater visibility and predictability when it comes to their revenue streams, Verner said.
“Our product offering seems to be hitting the market at the right time,” Verner said. “The industry is moving towards mobile workers and we want to eliminate any barriers that prevent them from accessing and managing their information.”
Other areas where Verner says ROAM will work well include legal, municipal government and call centre industries, where people need to manage their information systems. Darrell Collier, senior vice-president at Prudential Consulting Inc., a business that specializes in IT, healthcare and business process outsourcing services and also a recent AnyWare Group partner, says he expects that adding ROAM to the company’s sales portfolio will help expand business.
“ROAM is a technology that truly enables the secure and safe management of hospital data and this is something that’s critical for when you work in the healthcare world,” Collier said.
“We also offer transcription and dictation systems and services that help with electronic patient documentation and ROAM will help us branch out outside of the healthcare sector in areas such as (legal) offices, a market we haven’t attacked before.”
Moving forward, Verner said AnyWare Group wants to continue its expansion into Canada, the U.S. and the healthcare market and also wants to focus on one or two other industry verticals to help extend its reach.
“Partners need to know they can make commission on ROAM and they can also find other opportunities to add on, such as software, to increase their revenue streams,” Verner said. “Because SaaS brings predictability to a partner’s revenue stream, we think partners will jump on this sort of opportunity.”
