Closing the loop - Tarsus lends technical expertise to SME resellers

Smaller resellers have begun chasing larger, more enterprise-centric deals in the hope of keeping their businesses afloat over the next 12 to 18 months.

The only problem with this strategy is that few, if any of them, have the requisite skills to compete in this sector.

"Not only are the technical staff members required to play in the enterprise space expensive to train and remunerate, they're in such short supply and are likely to go where the most appealing job prospect takes them," says Greg Pothitos, business unit manager of Tarsus' HP ESS division.

"Generally, that's not in the SME sector," he says.

"They seek out large companies with deep pockets and a stable work environment - something that only exacerbates issues for the smaller players."

Pothitos says that Tarsus has, however, realised that the SME-sized partners in its ranks are hungry for business and as such, are extremely likely to land new deals provided they can show they have access to the skills to make good on the installation, integration and ongoing maintenance of a solution.

"That's where we come in," Pothitos says.

"Through Tarsus' own internal engineering team, SME partners can easily make good on the technical requirements of an enterprise deal," he says.

"We've gone to great lengths to ensure that our technical team is not only sufficiently skilled to deal with the kind of work required by enterprise customers, but that they're able to go onsite and act as the SME's technical team.

"And so far, it's working out well," he adds.

Pothitos says the model is already being used by a number of SME partners, and across the board, they're finding it to be far more cost-effective and reliable than hiring contractors or permanent staffers to do the same job.

"We'd like to think that we're empowering and enabling hungry-partners to chase the kind of business they want to," he says.

"Aside from increasing the partner's value proposition, it ensures that a healthy stream of business continues to flow through Tarsus and its channel - innovative models such as these are going to be the only way technology firms will weather the coming 12 to 18 months of financial pressure," he adds.

Pothitos says this new service is also an extremely novel way for Tarsus to begin increasing its penetration into markets that were previously inaccessible.

"SME resellers play in a market that we always had difficulty addressing," he says.

"Unfortunately though, they're not exploiting this market to its fullest potential, shying away from selling more complex solutions because they quite simply don't have the skills to do so.

"Not only does our approach to building skills inside of Tarsus allow smaller resellers to diversify their focus into the enterprise sector, it also allows for their traditional market sector to gain access to a range of products that they never had before. You don't get more of a win-win situation than that," he says.

"Our partners should rest assured that we will continue thinking laterally and coming up with similarly enabling solutions," he concludes.