Another bastion of the direct sales model has fallen with the decision by SAS Institute to launch a channel program.
“We recognize there are opportunities in the SMB market, and we can’t continue to capture all opportunities by just hiring our own sales team,” said Jim Davis, senior vice-president and chief marketing officer of the Cary, N.C.-based business intelligence software company.
“Our sales team focuses on the high end, and anything under that threshold is available to the reseller.”
In the U.S., six products are included, in the areas of data integration, forecasting, desktop data mining, deployment and business intelligence.
The BI licensing model has been changed to per user pricing, instead of being based on the size of the server, to accommodate the needs of businesses smaller than SAS usually sells to.
SAS also offers a substantial percentage of annual renewal revenues – up to 25 per cent – to resellers that maintain their customer satisfaction rating at required levels and achieve certain levels of certification.
Similar in Canada
The Canadian program is similar, said Pat Finerty, SAS Canada’s VP of alliances and business development.
“Canada is more mid-market oriented,” he said in an interview. “We’re going industry vertical by industry vertical, and being selective in picking partners. We will be sharing renewal revenue, but how we share will depend on the market, and the depth of skills the partner is willing to undertake.”
“This strategy is a recognition that its existing direct sales approach can’t always scale down to the needs of smaller enterprises,” said Carmi Levy, senior research analyst at London, Ont.’s Info-Tech Research Group. But, he added, “the strategy lags that already executed by Business Objects, Cognos and Hyperion, all of which already have strong channel partnerships in play.”
Finerty said SAS hopes to gain traction in the market by starting with resellers who already have a strong foothold in each target vertical. He’s looking for “a small handful” of resellers who would bring their domain expertise and customer relationships.
SAS will provide training and tools.
“SAS has a long history in working with system integrators,” he said. Product training and materials developed for the SIs are being adapted for VARs. “Feedback we’ve had from resellers we have discussed this with is that they’re looking forward to making an investment in skills development and training.”
Levy said it is a move forward for the BI market because small and mid-sized firms have been scared off by the steep learning curve required to implement, maintain and take advantage of the technology. Selling through the channel will allow SAS to empowering VARs to help SME clients get up to speed.
