Robert Muir’s secret plan for building the MIS Group is not a big secret. It’s really Business 101. “What a lot of companies have is people who are first and foremost either sales people or technical,” says Muir, who founded the Houston-based organization 12 years ago as a Timberline reseller. “We have those things, but in the senior management group, we have veteran business people who are applying largely a scale business concept to a traditionally smaller business. It’s a different way.”
That has propelled the MIS Group from a role as a little-known member of the channel for Timberline’s construction software to the largest reseller that handles only applications from Sage Software.
In 2006, it acquired the Enterprise Resource Group, along with purchasing two Timberline dealers, which propelled it to the top of the Sage channels. In December, it acquired MicroAccounting Systems of Dallas, which itself had about $8 million in revenue.
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Growing by acquisition produces rapid expansion and unites companies that are using different hardware, software and telephony systems.
Recruiting Stations Open
The last few months have been good ones for resellers who are looking for new opportunities. Programs have been introduced both by companies relatively new to the reselling game, like Deltek and Intuit, to old hands, such as Epicor and Exact Software.Here’s a summary of the companies’ goals:
Deltek. Deltek, which markets project software, has several channel categories, including consultant, CPA network and reseller.
Epicor. Although Epicor has been known more for direct sales in recent years, the company says it wants to increase channel sales to 30 percent of revenue by year’s end, up from an estimated 22 percent at the end of 2007.
Exact Software. After years of buying some of its best dealers, Exact Software says it wants to have modest channel growth. It is looking for experienced VARs, and especially those that have experience in vertical markets.
Intaact. Online vendor Intacct says its Intacct Solution Provider program is designed to attract the top 5 to 7 percent of resellers. Its target is to have the channel contract more than 50 percent of revenue by the end of next year.
Intuit. Intuit established the Intuit Solution Provider program partly in response to dealers who were selling it without a program. Early on, it enlisted accounting firms that were part of its ProAdvisor program, but began looking for traditional VARs later in 2007.
“We are a mini example of what Sage is doing—taking a disparate group and bringing it under one culture,” says Muir.
But in dealing with those changes, the MIS Group’s other key tactic is pretty old fashioned, too — communicate with employees. As it acquired companies, it began talking to their employees about how those companies operate.
“We have tried to have staff meetings with as large a percent of the group in the meeting as we can,” says Muir. “But that is getting harder and harder to do.”
The MIS Group has significantly increased its travel budget to enable senior managers to visit other locations, which Muir considers essential in giving them the ability to understand and be understood.
A Year of Change
The changes Muir and the MIS Group are grappling with are changes facing the rest of the market. As he pointed out, Sage Software is dealing with integrating product lines. So is rival Microsoft. And both vendors experienced personnel changes at the top.
Doug Burgum, who had led Microsoft Business Solutions and before that Great Plains for 23 years, retired. Most of his team was broken up—some leaving Microsoft, but others, like corporate VP Tami Reller, moving into positions of more responsibility within the large company.
But leadership changes often have little impact on resellers, as long as they can make sales. What worries them more is competition from other dealers, whether they are selling the same or different products.
For example, while MIS Group was moving into Dallas, so were other regional dealers, including Interdyn Pro Data, which moved in to the Dallas office last year.
Although it’s not close to the MIS Group in size, with $4.5 million in revenue, the company had a good year, says CEO Chris Burleson.
