Accounting software developer Sybiz has almost completed a re-engineering of its Vision (accounting) and Visipay (payroll) software and made radical changes to its channel model.
As reported previously in ARN, the Adelaide-based developer has been experiencing a reinvention of sorts after its South African parent, Softline, flew in new managing director Peter Whalley to turn the developer's fortunes around.
"It's been a tough couple of months, no doubt about that," Whalley said. "What we have managed to do is maintain the belief our channel partners have in Sybiz."
The vendor is looking to provide its customers with more pertinent upgrades that are easy to implement, and as such pre-release versions of Vision (2.51) and Visipay (3.20) are now available. The vendor has also launched its "Accountmate" product and begun training its resellers in the US-developed suite for larger businesses.
Channel partners can now access a site called "Sybiz Central", which allows them to see what changes to Sybiz product have been requested, what has been approved for change and what has been changed.
Sybiz has also downloaded the customer lists of its channel partners and uploaded them onto a site where both vendor and channel partner can view a customer's status. The company is looking to transform itself out of a product sales-driven model to a model that allows both the vendor and its channel partners to support customers in an open, transparent fashion. Whalley said channel partners have so far reacted with caution, but are slowly gaining confidence that the vendor has the best of intentions when interacting with its customers.
