Business software vendor appoints channel manager for local expansion
- 22 April, 2010 10:09
Business-to-business software vendor, Sterling Commence, has brought on its first Australian channel manager as part of plans to increase its indirect sales ratio.
Former Sybase director of channels and alliances, Steve Dolan, has been appointed senior channels manager and will be responsible for recruiting and managing partners. He told ARN Australia was one of several countries identified by the vendor’s Global Sales Organisation where systems integration and reseller partners were increasingly important for market growth.
“The partner community we have has been fairly limited to specific focus areas. There has been no strategic thinking around partners, so it’s been more a consequence of particular market activity or customer engagement,” Dolan said. Examples include HCL and UXC subsidiary, BCT Group.
“My role is to look at the products we are selling and analyse how to sell those outside of our larger strategic customer base.”
Potential partners on Dolan’s radar are those with industry and vertical expertise in manufacturing and logistics, health, telecommunications, media and entertainment and the broader B2B space. Sterling has traditionally been strongest in the banking and financial services sector. Its customers include ANZ and the Reserve Bank.
“Our interest is in partners who can value-add around particular industry-related services, and who have domain expertise as well as in the types of technology and applications we are integrating with,” Dolan said. Specifically, partners with knowledge of enterprise integration, collaboration at the gateway, ERP and order management were a good fit.
Dolan hoped to have channel representing 30-50 per cent of total Australian sales in the medium term, but said he wasn’t working to a specific number of recruits.
Sterling is a subsidiary of AT&T. Its infrastructure-as-a-service offering, Sterling Collaboration Network, and its broader Business Integration Suite are aimed at addressing B2B integration and secure, managed data transfer.
