IDS Scheer would like to drive half its revenue in the Americas through the channel, and the Business Process Modeling (BPM) vendor has three objectives in building-out its partner program to meet that goal.
IDS Scheer produces the ARIS platform of BPM tools. It’s used by consultants and partners to simplify BI implementations and upgrades. The German parent company, IDS Scheer AG, is it a different stage of maturity with its partner program than IDS Scheer is in the Americas says Allen Johnson, director, Americas partners, IDS Scheer.
As he focuses on building-out the program in the Americas, Johnson says he has set three primary objectives to build from.
The first is to increase off payroll revenue by selling licenses they wouldn’t have sold otherwise, primarily through the channel. Currently about 30 per cent of IDS Scheer’s Americas revenue comes through SIs, not including the SAP business, and Johnson says the goal is to build that to more than 50 per cent.
The second channel goal is to augment IDS Scheer’s own delivery capability, providing partners the support they need to do product implementation.
The third goal, which Johnson says is the key one, is to drive strategic continuous usage of ARIS in the enterprise, so the product doesn’t go on the shelf after the initial BI implementation. This would also equal more license revenue. And continuous BPM will mean dashboards to measure business processes vs. key performance indicators for operational executives, something Johnson says IDS Scheer can’t do itself.
“We can’t build those platforms for a company, those role based views and customized dashboards, it’s the (partner) that has those dialogs with the clients,” said Johnson.
The vendor hasn’t been active on the reseller front in the Americas, says Johnson, focusing instead on SIs, although in Europe IDS Scheer does have a tiered partner program and a network of regional resellers. While there’s no timeline for bringing the reseller program here, says Johnson, that doesn’t mean the door is closed.
“The resellers I’d be interested in talking to today would be the resellers that are BMC, SAP, and Oracle SMB-focused because we’re a logical extension to their business,” said Johnson. “Any of the resellers that are BMC, Oracle or SAP I would talk to them today and extend what we’re doing in Europe today.”
As the economy slows and as more companies look at managed services and Software as a Service (SaaS), IDS Scheer says business process modeling and optimization is becoming ever more strategic to businesses.
Thomas Volk, IDS Scheer AG’s president and CEO, said companies are facing more pressure to change and be ready to adapt to changing business demands, but they don’t always know if the proposed changes will lead to the desired results. BPM, said Volk, can help companies make the right changes.
“Processes are the key element to change because that determines how the change will happen,” said Volk.
In a slowing economy projects that don’t have an immediate ROI are often the first to go. It’s in just this situations though, said Volk, that BPM can play an important role.
“Fine-tuning your existing infrastructure and using it more efficiently without buying more IT is a good value proposition,” said Volk, noting a new product from IDS Scheer can help businesses better leverage their existing infrastructure. “It looks at how you link your IT assets with the business processes and leverage them, so some of the investments you’d planned maybe we don’t have to do anymore.”
Companies are also increasingly turning to managed services and SaaS as a less risky way to upgrade their IT infrastructures, but Volk said moving to one of these models doesn’t make modeling, understanding and fine tuning business processes any less important.
“This introduces a change in the business and how you do things, and from that perspective we don’t see it hindering us,” said Volk. “It’s another reason to make sure, when moving to a new environment, that they’re actually getting the benefits and you can link the change to the result you want.”