HTG's Hands That Give: VARs Help Other VARs In A Crisis

HTG Peer Groups has launched a new program to help VAR members who have encountered a natural disaster, suffered a personal injury or were met with an incident that puts the business at risk.

The Hands That Give program was developed as a means for VARs to help each other during times of need, said Lester Keizer, CEO of XiloCore, a backup storage vendor working with HTG on the program. Mike Semel of Business Continuity Technologies, a Las Vegas-based VAR borne from the former Connecting Point of Las Vegas, which closed in 2010, is also working with HTG on the program.

"This is the defining moment of HTG Peer Groups. We're based on the foundation of a 'go-giver' concept," Keizer said. "Collectively, we have something to give and we try to give to those that need."

The program will rely on the volunteer human capital and resources of HTG Peer Groups' 250 member companies, which collectively have more than 3,000 employees. Each HTG Peer Groups member is being organized into categories based on its expertise and resources and some members are going through formal training from the Disaster Recovery Institute to create a database of first responders, Keizer said. In addition, vendors and distributors are pledging their support to provide products and services on an emergency basis.

"If there's a tornado and we need to get stuff to the area, we can do that. The problem is if it's not coordinated it can be more of a detriment than a help. We have a distributor's pallet ready with stuff to go: server, workstations, laptops, firewalls, anything to get up and running from a tech standpoint," Keizer said. "The large distributors also have good relationships with UPS and FedEx to help us."

Because HTG Peer Groups is an organization of VARs that already help each other by providing best practices and ideas to run their business better, it was only natural that the members take the next step to offer emergency support, said Arlin Sorensen, CEO of HTG Peer Groups.

"Small companies don't have the deep resources in the event something happens. [Hands That Give] just ties together different things we've been working on over the years, relationships and infrastructures, and allows us the leverage to help a member that comes under some sort of disruption," Sorensen said.

The VARs that offer their resources do so on a pro bono basis with no payment for services, Keizer said. "They write it off the way attorneys do [for pro bono work]. It's really part of the HTG culture," he said.

NEXT: Hands That Give Already Giving

The coverage will start strictly for HTG Peer Groups members but Sorensen said he'd like it to offer it on a broader basis to VARs in need.

"We're going to walk before we can run. We need to get the infrastructure in place, do some responses, get our ducks in a row. We certainly believe there's a need broadly across the channel. There's lots of SMB companies that run into situations," Sorensen said. "I see it as an ecosystem, not something that only HTG can do, as we get vendors engaged and others help us with the resources we need. The power of peers is unbelievably powerful."

Sorensen believes VARs will seek to join Hands That Give to provide help, not receive it, which will allow it to meet demand for emergency support. "We know it's needed. What we don't want to do is not respond. We want to help," he said.

HTG Peer Groups members have informally helped each other for years but this creates a more formalized and efficient assistance program, Keizer said.

"As soon as it was announced, one VAR said he had some real needs. There was a diagnosis of an owner with an illness that left his spouse to run the company. We're providing help on how to do ticketing and trying to figure if we need to send an engineer for five or six days to help since he was an engineer too," Keizer said.

In a release, HTG Peer Groups cited the example of another VAR, Michael Cocanower, president of itSynergy, who fell and suffered a serious illness last fall that caused him to worry about his wife and his business.

"Having a program like Hands That Give in place would have allowed my company to be sold in an orderly fashion with the highest value possible rather than a fire sale in a crisis situation," Cocanower said in a statement. "What is really important, however, is the peace of mind it would give my wife -- and that is worth more than anything in the world to me."