SAS Continues Fine-Tuning Channel Program

"We've spent a lot of time and effort to get everyone on the same page," said Karl Schlatzer, director of OEM sales and business development, strategic alliances and channels. "The intent is to be very, very efficient in how we go to market with this model and it seems to be working well," he said in an interview Monday at the company's SAS Global Forum conference at the National Harbor complex outside Washington, D.C.

SAS, known for its sophisticated business analytics software, launched a channel program in late 2006 in an effort to expand sales to a wider range of customers, particularly to small and midsize businesses. Before then, the company exclusively sold direct, largely to big companies.

But the initial effort got off to a slow start because it put too much focus on increasing sales volumes through resellers even though the company's forte is selling what Schlatzer called "premium products" coupled with "high-touch" services and support. SAS also initially restricted channel partner sales to customers with $500 million or less in annual sales and limited the products they could carry to a small number of preconfigured software packages.

At last year's SAS Global Forum, company executives disclosed plans to make changes to the program, including dropping the customer-size restriction, allowing solution providers to sell any SAS product, and improving coordination between resellers and SAS' direct sales force.

Schlatzer said SAS is putting more emphasis on recruiting solution providers with sophisticated skills in analytics, particularly in specific vertical industries. The company's several hundred channel partners are each aligned with specific sales teams within SAS and are linked to vertical-industry business units for planning purposes, he said.

"SAS is second-to-none in both technical support and in channel support," said Matthias Kehder, director of analytical consulting at Modern Analytics, a San Diego-based solution provider that's worked with SAS technology for 15 years and began reselling its products when the partner program was launched.

Elite Technology Solutions, a SAS reseller in Beachwood, Ohio, has seen more leads and increased sales because of the closer interaction between channel partners and SAS' sales force, said principal Don Fenner. (Schlatzer said about one-third of channel sales result from leads provided by the vendor.)

A couple of channel partners said that while SAS has worked to reduce channel conflict, such as through channel account managers who act as advocates for partners and through its deal-registration system, they said conflicts with SAS' direct sales force and consulting services still crop up. Elite Technology's Fenner said SAS' sales representatives aren't compensated for steering sales toward channel partners.

Schlatzer said less than 2 percent of deals resellers try to register are rejected because SAS sales reps or another partner already recorded the lead.

The company continues to recruit new channel partners "selectively," he said, particularly those with specific skills and in geographies where coverage is thin.

While SAS' total revenue increased 5 percent in 2008, channel sales grew 15 percent last year, Schlatzer said. The company has set a goal of generating 15 to 20 percent of all new sales through the channel, and Schlatzer said some sales regions around the world could achieve that this year.