Innovative Approaches in the Free-for-all World of Value-added Resellers
P.J. Jakovljevic - May 18, 2006

A Hybrid Approach: The Way to Go for Most?

Indeed, most vendors' business models are of a hybrid nature, where there is a tiered approach to demarcating direct sales from the channel-driven model. Typically, most vendors will want to give special, personal "care and feed" to customers of strategic importance, whether because they are large and widespread global corporations, or because they spend a certain annual amount on the vendor's software. Larger businesses typically manage infrastructure and integrate products to a large extent with their own information technology (IT) resources, while smaller and midsized companies buy the infrastructure within the applications, and want integrated products containing only the features they need. Also, small and medium businesses (SMBs) typically want ready-to-go business processes with built-in flexibility to accommodate their inimitable processes, whereas their larger brethren want the unrestrained capability to customize solutions to fully fit existing best processes...