Exclusive: Accordo Group Nabs Intermedia Channel Leader Eric Roach

Accordo Group, a software asset management company led by former Intermedia Chief Revenue Officer Eric Martorano, has brought on his former colleague Eric Roach as senior vice president of sales and marketing.

Roach will be responsible for leading Accordo's go-to-market initiatives in more than 25 countries and will report directly to Martorano, who joined the company as CEO in October.

Cloud communications provider Intermedia confirmed in March that Roach left his post as its global vice president of strategic partner sales. Roach told CRN at the time that he was in the midst of securing a new position with another company.

Roach, a channel veteran, was attracted to the Accordo Group because of the company's focus on boosting sales through the channel. Roach's new role will allow him to make use of his international channel-building experience.

"My 25 years of IT and sales management experience has been almost exclusively through the channel," he said. "That's something that really energizes me to be able to take that to the next level because that's where the company wants to go."

[Related: Accordo Group Hires Channel Vet To Boost Partner Sales]

"I'm also really excited to have the opportunity to work with really new and exciting big data and AI technology that Accordo has used to make the lives of its customers easier and more efficient," he said.

Accordo Group, a 20-year-old company based in Auckland, New Zealand, specializes in SMB revenue recovery, software asset management, cloud solutions and data-enabled sales. The company helps software vendors’ channel partners generate sales through predictive analytics and artificial intelligence.

Partner-led engagements often translate to a better customer experience, Roach said. "Accordo sees that opportunity, and one of my charters is to build a better engagement model for our partners."

Specifically, Accordo wants to better educate the channel on its story, he said. "The more we can share our story with partners and ahead of any customer engagement, we're going to end up providing a better outcome for all parties," he said. "Those deals are always more successful."

According to the company, about 60 percent of Accordo's revenue is generated from the U.S. market. A healthy portion of the Accordo's deals are going through channel partners today, Roach said.

Accordo has plans in the coming months to bring its own branded data analytics tools to market as individual products exclusively through the channel; the same tools that Accordo has been using behind the scenes to support its own client engagements, Roach said. “That's really going to take this company to the next level,” he added.

Roach served as Intermedia's global vice president of strategic partner outside sales for nearly two and a half years, where he was responsible for leading Intermedia's worldwide field sales, distribution and strategic communities businesses. Prior to that, Roach worked for Microsoft for more than nine years and served as the company’s Global Account Director of worldwide channel sales for three years.

"We are thrilled to welcome [Roach] to our leadership team at Accordo," Martorano said in a statement. "Leveraging his sales leadership experience, his proven track record of driving profitability for SMB customers, as well as his innate understanding of the channel ecosystem is vital as we invest in new product and service offerings while expanding into additional markets."