Best Revs Channel Effort

Best Software partners say the company's new channel program puts it into a pole position in the midmarket software race, even as Microsoft moves aggressively to expand its share.

Launched last week, the Best Partner Advantage Program puts the broad line of Best products,including Peachtree accounting, MAS 90 and MAS 500 accounting/ERP and Act contact management software,under one umbrella, backed up by guaranteed leads and a new financing program, company executives said.

Best, in conjunction with American Express, also is providing 0 percent financing for three years on IT projects.

"This is huge for us," said Alan Hardy, a technology partner in the Tempe, Ariz., office of Clifton Gunderson, a Peoria, Ill.-based accounting and consulting firm. "The resources that Best is putting into this are phenomenal."

Best, which has 6,600 partners, also unveiled a new customer migration center and launched a program that provides customers moving from Peachtree to MAS 90 with a 20 percent discount.

Best is being "selective" in adding new partners, said Ron Verni, Best's CEO. "Many times it is easy to add large numbers," he said. "The relationship that we have with our channel partners and the way that we qualify them, help train them and certify them, not everyone is going to be able to participate. But we do envision growing our partner channel."

Verni added that Best may make software acquisitions to penetrate deeper into the accounting, manufacturing, distribution and nonprofit sectors.

Clifton Gunderson's Hardy said that combining the many Best products under one channel program will almost certainly increase the number of Best products he sells to clients.

"To be able to deal with them as one company will really simplify our relationship with them in areas as simple as placing a product order or getting support or sales consulting."

Bennett/Porter and Associates, a 15-year-old Portland, Ore., solution provider, recently looked at other software vendors and decided to stick with Best, said President Sue Bennett.

"There is no better partner," she said. "I feel really confident. We went through the due diligence to pick up another enterprise-level product and there is not another company that treats their partners as well as Best. They just don't exist."