1. Gaining Value From Your Value Added Reseller
Most small or start-up value-added resellers (VARs) began with the original intention of being a
VAR—planning from the outset to sell and implement complete solutions for their customers.
Many new VARs consider their software implementation and integration services to be a key
piece of their value picture—one that was always part of the plan.
Consider, then, a different type of start-up VAR. AimSourcing, an Austin, Texas-based company
offering outsourced accounting services, didn’t set out to be a VAR in the traditional sense. Their
plan was around a business process outsourcing (BPO) model—to become the regional leader in
accounting outsourcing services.
“Our mission and focus was—and still is—to provide complete outsourced accounting services
for our customers. We made our reputation by ensuring that our customers didn’t need to
become accountants in order to run and grow their businesses,” says Sarah Glass, President of
AimSourcing. Her company built a solid reputation around services and consulting; reselling
software was not part of the original plan. “The notion that we could provide true business value
to our customers by reselling and implementing software was one that crept up on us, in a
manner of speaking,” she says.
Growing organically into a VAR role, AimSourcing became a different kind of solutions provider
for another reason as well: they partner with a mid-size software vendor, rather than looking to
one of the market giants like IBM or Microsoft. AimSourcing tapped Journyx, another Austin
company, as their vendor of choice. Journyx could offer AimSourcing something to take their
services to the next level: workforce time accounting.
“Many of our customers couldn’t get a clear, real-time picture of their labor costs. They also
lacked historical time tracking data to use for project estimation. When we wanted to provide an
excellent time accounting solution for these customer problems, Journyx was a natural choice,”
says Glass.
With thousands of customers worldwide—from small and mid-size companies to the likes of
American Airlines, GE, and Schlumberger—Journyx offered a robust and fully-functional system
that was just right for AimSourcing and its customers.
Journyx was a good fit for several reasons. First, the company had an extremely configurable
product, flexible enough to fit the range of business needs spanning AimSourcing’s customer
base. AimSourcing gained opportunities to sell not only the time accounting software, but the
configuration services needed to set it up for the customer. Second, the software could integrate
with Intuit’s QuickBooks; a package most of their customers used. This allowed AimSourcing to
leverage their QuickBooks expertise to sell add-on high-margin QuickBooks optimization work.
Lastly, Journyx had a web-based application that allowed AimSourcing and their customers to
administer, configure, and use the system from anywhere in the world.

2. For all these reasons, AimSourcing found the partnership with Journyx beneficial from day one.
But another, perhaps even more important benefit became clear very quickly. Reselling a hosted
software-as-a-service (SaaS) application made excellent business sense. It created virtually
instant add-on recurring revenue streams. Recurring revenues are not only cash-flow friendly,
they can also tangibly increase the valuation of start-up or smaller VAR companies, a fact that
AimSourcing could appreciate.
Moreover, AimSourcing discovered that their customers became more loyal and long-term
accounts. Having placed business-critical data into a secure hosted environment, the customers
found little incentive to move or migrate the data. The IT upgrade and maintenance headaches
were removed from the picture; not just for the customer, but also for AimSourcing.
“Since Journyx was hosting the software, we could focus on what we do best—consulting and
business services,” Glass said. “We didn’t have to learn anything about the IT piece of the
software puzzle. Instead, we could immediately focus on solving our customer’s business
problems. Everybody wins: especially our customers.”
Journyx, as a mid-size vendor, was sailing on “less-charted” channel program waters. While
partnership programs around a SaaS model are becoming more common, they are still found
mostly in the top vendor tiers (with companies like Salesforce.com, for example). Journyx
leveraged its OEM and service-provider channel expertise to offer a SaaS reseller program.
Journyx understood that the application, resold as a service, would be profitable for both
companies. But few companies like Journyx possessed capability maturity around SaaS channel
programs. Such programs had a different business model than did channel programs built
around stand-alone or traditional licensing. So Journyx simply charged ahead, building out the
channel program it would need to rapidly increase its SaaS market share. Sharing the value with
the partners was critical to the program’s success.
Reference Link: http://www.hr.com/en/app/blog/2011/11/gaining-value-from-your-value-
added-reseller_gv2klq7w.html