New offerings and greater efficiencies have helped this year's

Killer VARs blunt the effects of a bad economy

A saturated market, coupled with a challenging economic environment, certainly hasn't helped the software reselling market, but not everyone is letting that get them down.

In fact, this year's Killer VARs have found their respective silver linings by turning to more Web-based services, innovative revenue-generating offerings, more efficient workflow processes and enhanced customer service. For these organizations, their efforts are paying off and they have demonstrated that they have the drive, determination and savvy mindset it takes to be listed among the 2009 class of Killer VARs.

AVANKIA

Nashville, Tenn.

Chief executive: Reena Gupta

Year founded: 2002

No. of offices: 2

No. of employees: 22

2008 revenue: $2 million

Products: DBSync - Integration suite (QuickBooks; Intacct; Salesforce.com; Paypal; Auth­orize.Net; databases like Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, mySQL). TargetRecruit.net; Healthcare CRM built on Salesforce.com

When it comes to serving clients, reseller Avankia has found success in speaking with them on a business level and then bringing it down to the technology level, said co-founder and chief technology officer Rajeev Gupta.

"We can focus more on the business side and can provide an end-to-end solution," said Gupta, who noted that many of Avankia's product offerings were developed internally for use by its staff, and proved to be so successful that it decided to bring them to market.

Avankia offers the DBSync suite of integration and extraction tools. For example, through the DBSync for Salesforce.com and databases, users can extract, replicate and integrate Salesforce.com with their database. There's also DBSync for Salesforce.com and QuickBooks, which enables users to integrate data like accounts, contacts and opportunities from Salesforce.com with QuickBooks.

Much of Avankia's focus centers on providing Software as a Service like Salesforce.com or Intacct. SaaS is a model of software delivery where Avankia provides maintenance, daily technical operation, and support for the software provided to their client. According to data provided by Avankia, Gartner Inc. estimated that the global SaaS market will grow to $19.3 billion by 2011, tripling in size from $6.3 billion in 2006.

Avankia has an offshore center in India, and combining the firm's tools with its offshore operation enables it to offer clients faster and cheaper solutions, explained Gupta. He said that a typical implementation that would ordinarily cost a client about $10,000 could be done by Avankia for between $2,000 and $3,000.

Not only is SaaS cost-effective, but it also enables a firm to focus on its core business, and not IT. Because SaaS is cheaper and easier to implement, Avankia has been enabling clients to try before they buy.

"That is huge from a selling point of view, if I [as a client] can get the whole platform ahead of time," said Gupta, who noted that about 80 percent of clients who try a SaaS solution end up buying it. "It is a try-before-you-buy with a whole installation."

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