Sage expands partner ranks to aim at mid-market

Business software vendor, Sage, is looking to recruit new and existing partners for its upper mid-market charge in Australia.

The catalyst for its push is its ERP X3 offering, which provides financial, distribution and manufacturing capabilities along with process management functionality. Although the platform has been available in many global markets for several years, the vendor only made the decision to launch the platform locally in 2010.

The vendor’s managing director, Mike Lorge, said X3 was aimed at organisations with 100-1000 employees and complemented Sage’s Accpac ERP solution for smaller organisations. X3’s key competitor is Microsoft’s AX platform.

“We see a great opportunity in the upper mid-market in terms of new business, but there are also a number of businesses with more sophisticated requirements that typically were being addressed by lower-end products,” Lorge said.

He claimed X3’s customisable functionality, ease of implementation, cost-effectiveness and interface made it a good choice for partners and customers across various vertical markets.

A key growth opportunity for existing partners was Sage’s significant base of Accpac customers, many of whom now need the next level of applications, Lorge said. At the same time, it hopes to grow its market presence through new customer and partner acquisition.

Partners wanting to take on X3 need to commit to at least one trained sales employee and one services individual on the expectation headcount would grow, he said. As well as face-to-face tutorials, Sage is uploading a range of Web-based training sessions to its partner portal for partners to tap into and revisit. There are no revenue targets initially.

Partners will be supported by a growing team of six pre-sales, implementation and support individuals locally, and can access Sage’s global support team in Europe.

Lorge said 10 partners were already signed up, covering most major metropolitan areas, but he hoped to recruit more in order to give customers choice. Sage has about 140 partners selling products across its portfolio.

“We’ll look at our capabilities in all [geographic] areas to decide how many partners to sign up,” Lorge said.

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