How To Win New Customers, Keep the Old In '07

Nearly one-third of midsize and enterprise companies plan to increase the number of IT solution providers they work with in 2007, according to the VARBusiness Market Insight Report, which surveyed 600 midmarket and enterprise companies.

More specifically, 29 percent of respondents said their companies will look to increase the number of VARs and resellers they work with in the coming year. Midsize companies this year worked with on average 11 total solution providers, while enterprise companies employed about 15.

So, how can solution providers boost their hiring chances in '07?

More than half of those surveyed said the most valuable asset in an solution provider is technical expertise, followed up by cost and understanding of an end user's specific business. To a lesser degree, implementation time and product breadth were also cited as highly valued traits.

But smaller solution providers should not count themselves out of the race in '07. According to the study, the size of a technology provider's staff ranked last among the list of characteristics end users considered important.

While respondents said they're implementing many IT solutions on their own -- without the help of technology providers -- they did identify some business priorities where they are more likely to look to solution providers to co-implement solutions, such as streamlining and optimizing business processes, automating financial reporting and business intelligence, and storage utilization and archiving.