Quebec City, Canada (Aug. 27, 2003) -- Accpac International president David Hood has made the company’s aggressive customer relationship management strategy quite clear. The question now is where is the demand?
Some resellers here at the Accpac 2003 Partnership Conference said demand does justify the company’s move, or expressed faith that it will be there by the time the company’s channel is all certified. Others, even Hood, admit that demand isn’t where it could be.
“We are not short on CRM leads, but we are short on partners for where we want to be,” Hood said in an interview. “The CRM market is not completely engaged and there is definitely room for additional demand.”
Hood said demand for the company’s CRM product is looking up. He claimed that, on average, one CRM unit is sold for every five accounting software packages. In his keynote speech Thursday, Hood said that his CRM partners have grown to more than 600 from 150 in 2002, and he expects nearly all of his channel will eventually be certified to sell the product.
He also announced the launch of Accpaccrm.com, the company’s new hosted CRM product that is set up to function like its software brother. To incentivize resellers, Accpac is offering free signup for the new product until the end of August and 20 percent of the revenue from every new client they sign on to the product.
Meanwhile some resellers weren’t quite seeing the level of demand relative to the company’s push for the product, but expect that it will come in a relatively short time. Toronto-based reseller Aim Interactive has installed CRM software for the past 12 years and only recently took on Accpac CRM. Business for them has been steady, but president Garry Revesz is one of many expecting a boom.
“CRM isn’t just something you get into lightly, it’s a process, but one that I feel every SMB with an accounting system will eventually need and have,” Revesz said.
-- Seth Fineberg
