6 Ways to Save Time and Money on ERP Sofware By Choosing a Small VAR (Value Added Reseller)

Small ERP VARs (Value Added Resellers) can bring big benefits to your organization in ways you may not be aware of, saving you both time and money.  If you are currently working with a large VAR, you might be surprised at the time and money to be saved by working with a smaller VAR.

1. Response Time: Small VARs can respond more quickly to your needs getting you back in business faster.  Small VARs are more likely to be in closer contact with their sales and technical resources, sometimes being the same person, getting the answers to you more quickly so you can get back to your business of making money.  The client spends less time getting routed to the right person or even having to explain their needs to more than one person before getting help.  Also, small VARs will have less red tape and bureaucracy than larger organizations which cuts down on their response time, a real money saver during critical business hours.
2. Vested Interest: Small VARs are more likely to be intimately knowledgeable of your business systems.  This results in you getting the right advice from the right person many times immediately instead of waiting for your request to be processed by the appropriate ‘team’.  This, again, frees the clients up to get back to their business of making money.
3. JIT Support: Small VARs are more likely to partner with other small VARs, calling on their specialized expertise only when needed. These combined resources can provide the client with the depth and breadth found with some larger VAR organizations, while still providing you with an intimate knowledge of your business systems and also one person to call.  So the client gets the best of both worlds: quick and competent support.
4. Equal Treatment: If your business management needs tend to be more basic and you require a smaller system (say from 1 – 20 concurrent users) you are more likely to be treated as just as important as a larger client by the small VAR.  Large VAR organization have huge overhead to meet each month and many times must prioritize their resources to serve clients with larger, more complicated systems which require more attention and return higher fees, leaving the clients with smaller, less complicated systems to ‘wait in the wings’ for help.  A small ERP VAR is also more likely to be appreciative of all clients, regardless of their size.
5. Personalized Billing: Smaller VARs tend to be flexible in their time billing practices thus saving the client precious dollars.  It is common knowledge that the larger an organization is the more rigid they can be with their policies.  ERP VARs are no different.  Large ERP VARs have huge payrolls to meet each month.  The funding for these payrolls comes from their clients.  Large VARs also set billing quotas for their technicians to meet and can be hard pressed to write off or write down billings, opting instead to charge for every minute they work for a client and only reconsider a charge if is disputed.  Small VARs have more flexibility with what they charge because, for one thing, the person who compiles the bills is usually more intimately connected with the work that was done and the circumstances surrounding the charges and therefore can be more objective in deciding what is chargeable and what is not before the bill goes out.
6. Independent Software Selection:  Lastly, small VAR organizations can react more quickly to changes in the marketplace.  ERP software programs are always in a constant state of change.  Aligning the organization with the best choices in ERP is a less disruptive process for the small VAR.  What this means to the client is that a small VAR is more likely to be promoting an ERP solution by choice rather than by circumstance, reducing the chance of the client being sold a solution that is not a good fit, a costly mistake for any size company.

By David Thomas, bSolutions, LLC – Oklahoma Microsoft Dynamics GP Partner

6 Ways to Save Time and Money on ERP Sofware By Choosing a Small VAR (Value Added Reseller) is a post from: ERP Software Blog

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