Industry Veteran Takes Channel Management Reins At Intacct

Channel management veteran Taylor Macdonald is taking the channel chief post at Intacct, a leading supplier of on-demand financial management and accounting applications.

Macdonald, who has managed channel programs at Sage and Deltek, said in an interview that he sees opportunities for solution providers in the Software-as-a-Service area. And that’s especially true for solution providers who work with ERP applications in what has become a very saturated market.

’In a very flat-to-down growth market for ERP [software] for new business, which is the lifeblood of a business partner, the cloud financial [application] companies are the ones that are growing,’ Macdonald said.

Macdonald was himself a leading Sage VAR before he became that company’s channel chief. But he was ousted during a broad shakeup of Sage’s executive ranks in October 2007. Since then he has held channel management posts at Deltek and Infor.

Macdonald began working at Intacct as vice president of channels on July 1, reporting to president and CEO Robert Reid.

’I think Intacct is committed to being a substantially channel-centric organization,’ he said. ’Over the next 12 to 24 months we expect to build out a channel in North America with between 75 and 125 high-quality business partners.’

Intacct launched it’s channel program in March 2008 and the company has been recruiting resellers since. ’The biggest challenge becomes creating the enablement programs that help [resellers] become successful very quickly,’ Macdonald said, referring to sales and marketing assistance programs and implementation methodologies. ’That’s the hard, hard work.’

While Software-as-a-Service applications may not require as much technical implementation work as on-premise software, Macdonald said Intacct’s products offer solution providers a range of opportunities including business process consulting, integrating Intacct applications with other IT systems, and developing custom solutions. He said the Intacct product provides an attractive development platform for solution providers.