During the past ten years NetDocuments has been building a SaaS-based, feature-rich content management service leveraging its over 20 years experience in document management technologies and its expertise in the legal market. Our progressively evolving success in being strong in a vertical market and continually displacing on-premise software at new customer sites, has drawn the attention of traditional channel partners in an increasing rate.
Until now, SaaS has been widely considered “disruptive” to the traditional channel. In many ways it is. SaaS is a different delivery model with no traditional installations required by a partner and no software being shipped to the customer. SaaS solutions are iterated continuously with automatic updates directly to the customer. There is a vendor SLA (Service Level Agreement) in place directly with the customer.
As more and more customers recognize the value and benefits of SaaS, they want all their apps SaaS, putting the traditional channel partners in danger. I say “traditional’ as any channel partner who can adapt its own business model, understand how to compensate its own sales reps based on a recurring revenue model, and transform its own business in using SaaS applications internally, can and will succeed. It’s becoming more evident to me more and more. They become SaaS evangelists, along with their customers, riding the wave towards growing success and return on investment.
We at NetDocuments are catching the vision and tremendous opportunities for channel partners. We have been developing our own channel program in 2009, refining and tweaking it as we listen to interested partners, relating it to the SaaS world that we’ve been living for the past ten years, and embracing partners with an open mind and interest. Our goal is to develop a formula that aligns the partner community with our growing SaaS business. We are getting close and feel we may have a winner for all parties. Click here http://community.netdocuments.com/files/ND_Channel_Program-03-09.pdf to read our Channel Partner Overview.
We recognize the value of a SaaS channel program for both parties, and the need to establish strong channel relationships. We want them to succeed so they can rapidly and profitably satisfy their customer base. And at NetDocuments, we wish to succeed to rapidly and profitably extend our market reach into market segments that only a channel partner can take us into.
We are excited with the enthusiasm by our own sales reps and channel partners working well together, sharing knowledge and combined ideas. Here are a few examples:
Take Law Tech Partners (www.lawtechpartners) who have positioned themselves to service their customers with NetDocuments and recently announced their partnership via their newsletter. Anja.Rej, a consultant and trainer, successfully planned the deployment of NetDocuments at a large Florida law firm and now at Law Tech Partners can apply her experience with others.
Carlos Ferron at Westar Informatica http://community.netdocuments.com/partner.php?p=10, based on Arizona, shared with me that he recognizes the delivery model change with SaaS, but he knows that it’s the best solution for the customer, and when he delivers solutions that puts the customer’s interest at the forefront, the customer returns with referrals and more business back to him.
George Nicholson at Sage Solutions http://community.netdocuments.com/partner.php?p=3 has been offering traditional software for over 20 years, but is enthusiastically recognizes the need to evolve with the market. They have brought forward several of their clients to NetDocuments because he also is putting the needs and interests of his customers first. It’s rewarding watching this evolution of the old software world players embracing the new.
Our friends at SIS, http://community.netdocuments.com/partner.php?p=11 have already worked closely with NetDocuments in deploying several law firms with SaaS document management. They have experienced the value of SaaS and witnessed the benefits to its customers.
Kerri Russ, Level 5, (http://community.netdocuments.com/partner.php?p=14) and her team having been selling NetDocuments, combined with Salesforce to financial service firms, for the past couple years now. Our customer service team has worked closely with this partner proving how a channel with passion can successfully leverage the NetDocuments sales and service teams.
And, Don Dalrymple, AscendWorks, http://community.netdocuments.com/partner.php?p=13, focuses on solving the complex business problems for sales, marketing and customer service, and not directly on technology. He and his team have put together best practice solutions that facilitate business processes by offering 100% SaaS apps. Don is an example of living what he preaches by completly running his own business on SaaS.
We are excited moving forward in working with our emerging channel relationships and deliver to our “joint customers” an ongoing, recurring, and cost effective business solutions using SaaS apps. Go to http://community.netdocuments.com/partners.php to see the NetDocuments growing list of channel partners.
Some recent articles discussing SaaS and channel: 1) study by Research and Markets, stating, “Partners who have truly differentiated skills will be just fine in the new world [of SaaS]. As some software moves from on-premise to the cloud or SaaS, the partner value remains. We just need to figure out the economics.” http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/aee176/saas_channel_resea 2) “There’s a strong message emerging too about the importance of channels in delivering cloud and SaaS solutions to customers.” by Phil Wainewright http://blogs.zdnet.com/SAAS/?p=729 3) 2009, the year of the SaaS channel by Jeffrey Kaplan: http://www.thinkstrategies.com/blog/2008/10/will-2009-be-year-of-channel.html