In order to react quickly to changing business conditions, penetrate global markets, and above all remain competitive, businesses have learned that they need to stay informed, efficient, agile, and dedicated to their core competencies. All that, it turns out, is easier to achieve within an ecosystem of trusted partners.
All this talk of partnerships and relationships might sound a bit soft and fuzzy, but it’s not – it’s just good business. SYSPRO, for example, has been fostering partnerships since its inception. It is hard to imagine SYSPRO without its amazing global network of +1500 talented VARs (value-added partners). With them, we support approximately 16,000 customers. Without them our success would have been very difficult to achieve. This is why we lavish attention on our partner channel.
Creating Customer Value
Commitment to the success of our partners creates a feedback loop that provides everyone – including our customers – with unprecedented value. The resources that SYSPRO commits to its channel encourages our partners to provide an exceptional high level of service. The success that results from their efforts provides them with a revenue stream, through product sales, implementations and value added services like special development projects.
Because SYSPRO recognizes that business is collaborative and based on relationships, our customers are also brought into the fold and treated as partners. This helps build confidence in the company and the product, and ensures that companies end up with a system that truly conforms to their needs but is still flexible for them to make it truly theirs. Satisfied customers close the loop. Their input helps to improve the SYSPRO product, keeping it on the cutting edge of both technology and market relevance. In addition, satisfied customers are an extremely important element of our marketing strategy. Through word-of-mouth and customer success stories, they contribute to SYSPRO awareness and future sales. This, in turn, leads to further success for our partners.
Education as a Tool
One of the key ways that SYSPRO supports its partners is through continued education. It’s our belief, based on experience, that well-educated partners are one of our strongest sales and marketing tools. The ongoing training they receive provides in-depth understanding of SYSPRO’s features and functionalities, allowing partners to apply the SYSPRO product across a wide variety of business environments. In addition, SYSPRO’s Partner Program provides its partners with powerful support services, including access to technical software support, and to application development teams. Training also focuses on best practices for demonstrating and selling the SYSPRO product.
Happily, the expertise that partners gain in the SYSPRO product does not suffer from the dilution that plagues our competitors. While SYSPRO is an excellent ERP for many industries, we primarily focus on end-to-end solutions for manufacturing and distribution companies. Manufacturers are our bread and butter – we provide them with competitive advantage through our deep understanding of their businesses, and by our ability to address their specific models, such as make-to-order, make-to-stock, engineer-to-order, configure-to-order, assemble-to-order, quick turn and process/batch.
More than a Product
On the other hand, SYSPRO is a highly flexible module based solution, allowing partners to provide a wide array of customers with relevant services, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Business Analytics, Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS), e-Commerce, Warehouse Management (WMS) and Logistics.
SYSPRO is definitely more than a product, and more than just an effective business solution. It is a responsive and profitable ecosystem facilitated by partnerships, open communication and trust. It would be best, perhaps, to end this blog with a quote from one of our partners, Felicity Carroll of Carroll Business Solutions. Felicity has been installing and supporting SYSPRO since 1987.
“The phenomenal growth and development of SYSPRO Software over the years,” she tells us, “as well as the personalization and feedback from SYSPRO, has ensured very happy customers.”
This, to my mind, is the end result of a trusting partnership, and the cornerstone of our mutual success
