Surebridge Embraces The Channel In Services Push

Surebridge

Partners say the reason for the about-face is simple: Embracing the channel is providing new service opportunities for Surebridge and partners such as Akibia.

CRM consulting firm Akibia found that some of its midmarket customers did not have the financing to support new applications long term and were interested in having them hosted.

"We started to ask around and found that Surebridge had a good reputation," said Marc Salois, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Akibia, Westborough, Mass. "They had a similar culture, too. They are known [like us to be scrappy, creative and very committed to customer success."

The relationship with Surebridge is about six weeks old, but Salois said Akibia and Surebridge have eight customer projects in the works. Akibia is also adding an ASP component to its business, with Surebridge as the hosting and support provider.

"It works out well because they're not really interested in building out a Siebel professional services arm and we're not interested in having a big support arm," Salois said.

Navint Consulting, a boutique firm focused on CRM and ERP implementations, similarly brought in Surebridge when one of its customers wanted to outsource the maintenance of its PeopleSoft financial applications. "We bring them into deals and vice versa," said Howard Joyce, principal with Navint, New York. "It's been a real smooth implementation experience working with them."

Surebridge's reliance on partners is expected to grow now that the company views front- and back-end application integration as its new sweet spot, said interim CEO Peter Boni. "It's where the money is being spent and it's how we can best service the marketplace, " he said.

Salois said the dot-com era placed front-end implementation at the forefront, but little attention was paid to integrating the front- and back-end systems. "Now midmarket companies are putting more emphasis on that integration," Salois said.

Business process outsourcers have also been approaching Surebridge, said Boni, as customers want to not only outsource a business function but also that application.

And as Surebridge aligns itself with business process outsourcers, a natural transition is to focus on vertical markets. Moving forward, Surebridge plans to target five verticals: manufacturing/distribution, financial services, health care/pharmaceuticals, services and publishing/media.