The Presidents Club
The President's Club
November/December Edition, 2006: he Oceania division of Swedish OCR software vendor, ReadSoft International, has announced its plans to establish a local ReadSoft Service Bureau Partner Program. The program adds another channel to the company’s channel marketing strategy and marks a new direction for ReadSoft under its newly appointed Oceania managing director, Frank Volckmar. The goal of the program is to establish better ties with service bureaus that use ReadSoft’s technology and to help it bring more relevant products to market in support of their key customers.
Service bureaus represent over fifty-percent of ReadSoft’s Oceania revenues from countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Singapore. The service bureau partner program acknowledges the importance of this channel for the company. Bureaus that process in excess of one million documents using ReadSoft’s software will be invited to join the elite President’s Club, while CEOs of the club will be invited to join the Director’s Council - a twice-a-year roundtable enabling discussion of the program’s structure and future. At least six of Australia’s largest service bureaus will be invited to join the President’s Club which aims to open a clearer and more involved dialogue between ReadSoft and its key service bureau customers.
Smaller service bureaus are being offered the opportunity to network and develop greater awareness of ReadSoft’s products.
Program Objectives
Renfrey adds, “The main goal is to ensure that their [service bureaux] customers have the technology and financial support to ensure that business doesn’t go off shore. We want to ensure their clients have the technology and productivity to compete in a global market. The purpose of this is so that our customers are made aware of ReadSoft’s direction which will help them respond to the market better.”
Benefits available to its partners are training and consultancy services, access to ReadSoft’s technology road maps and its latest technologies, the opportunity for recognition of partner contribution, and marketing assistance from ReadSoft’s global network. The group’s goal to counter off-shoring back-office functions should be a winner with bureaus considering joining. Renfrey says, “One of the risks business face is that other countries have different laws around the privacy regulations and many documents we process require tight access control.”
Sharing Innovative Ideas
QM Technologies, which employs nearly 500 people across Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, is one of the first service bureaus to join the program.
Keith Grieves, general manager of QM Technologies says, “This group will offer a pipeline to other bureaus in our region and around the world. The major challenges we face are that customers don’t understand the true cost of processing documents because they fail to look at the total cost of document processing. This includes the cost of archiving and maintaining an organisation’s infrastructure to support document processing. Other factors include mishandled documents and documents passing through different departments and geographies. QM is well suited with its mature technology and processes in finding cost effective solutions for these organisations.”
Renfrey says, “QM Technologies epitomizes the ideal target for this group because they are committed to ReadSoft’s technologies and are using our technologies world-wide.”
Besides its value as a customer, QM Technologies has demonstrated the innovativeness ReadSoft is looking for. Two years ago QM requested an accounts payable version of ReadSoft’s INVOICES software which revealed a weakness in the product’s narrowly-defined name. “QM helped us identify a weakness in our marketing and also a new market in remittance processing. QM has now been using this for 2 years and it is this type of feedback we’re looking for in the President’s Club.”
The first council meeting will offer partners strategy sessions, the opportunity to provide feedback to ReadSoft and will raise awareness of ReadSoft direction and how to bring new products to the market by using ReadSoft’s global network to bring home issues from around the world.
“Sweden and Australia,” says Renfrey, “are at the forefront in terms of service bureaus, so we wanted to create this opportunity for our management to learn from their management.”