QlikView South Africa received one of five coveted Special Partner Awards at Qonnections 2008, the annual global partner summit of QlikTech, the world's fastest growing business intelligence (BI) software vendor according to IDC. The event was attended by over 300 partners from around the world.
Special Partner Awards are presented to partners for "closing a strategic deal, demonstrating exceptional commitment in their QlikView business or for obtaining significant public recognition for themselves and QlikTech".
The award follows February's release of the annual ITWeb Business Intelligence (BI) survey, which showed that QlikView has become South Africa's preferred software. 22.3% of respondents to the survey bought QlikView during 2007, compared to 15.8% who bought the next most popular product.
Of the companies who evaluated QlikView, 89% subsequently bought the product. "If you consider only the companies who did a proof of concept with us, the percentage is even higher," says QlikView South Africa's Davide Hanan. "We're delighted that South African businesses are leading the way in adopting this compelling product."
Hanan shared QlikView South Africa's experience with partners from more than 60 countries at Qonnections 2008, the annual conference for members of QlikTech's Qonnect programme.
The conference also saw the announcement of new enhancements to the Qonnect programme that will expand the global availability of QlikView. Specific improvements include new performance-driven terms for resellers, a new "Elite" reseller category, a sales and technical certification programme, and new joint marketing tools and programmes.
"QlikTech's relentless focus on simplicity extends to every aspect of our business, including our relationships with our alliance partners," said Lars Bj"ork, CEO of QlikTech. "We've made it even simpler for qualified companies to create better solutions, grow revenue, improve customer satisfaction and enhance business performance."
QlikTech's partners are a diverse community of innovators who fall into three categories:
* "Sell Partners" are qualified value added resellers of QlikView.
* "Deploy Partners" are service providers that implement QlikView for customers.
* "OEM Partners" are ISVs, including SaaS providers, and information providers that integrate QlikView for more powerful and visual analysis in their own solutions.
Qonnect provides a complete lifecycle of support to partners, based on three fundamental pillars for success:
* Enable partners through technical support, education, training and certification.
* Market with and for partners through branding, awareness, customer marketing and lead generation programmes.
* Sell QlikView and "Powered by QlikView" products with effective sales tools and sales support.
The theme for Qonnections 2008 was "The Power of Simplicity", reflecting QlikView's key value. "Gathering the Qonnect community together to share experiences strengthens the end results for everyone," said Les Bonney, QlikTech's SVP of Worldwide Sales. "The Qonnect programme harnesses the proven success of QlikTech's business models so that our partners - both new and existing - can grow fast as well, with scalable and repeatable approaches that complement and build on their existing businesses."
The new-and-improved Qonnect ensures a robust, scalable, industry-leading programme to support the recruitment of new partners, which will play a vital role in QlikTech's continued hyper growth. Consolidation in the BI space has left many companies feeling isolated and abandoned by their traditional BI partners, and facing an uncertain future. Qonnect provides an attractive alternative for companies seeking more secure, and simpler business relationships that provide more growth opportunities with faster time to value.
Examples of each category among the solution providers who have dedicated business practices to QlikView are:
Climber AB (Sell Partner)
Stockholm-based Climber AB started its relationship with QlikTech in 2005, when it initially spun off from an ERP consulting company. It began a dedicated QlikView practice as a Deploy Partner that year and has tripled its business since then. Climber's QlikView business expanded into selling QlikView, so they have since become a QlikView Sell Partner. "Seeing our clients' satisfaction when using QlikView raised a desire to work with QlikView ourselves," said Jan Sipek, CEO of Climber. "Our entire organisation at Climber is based on QlikView - it's the only BI-tool we offer to our customers."
Natural Synergies, Inc (Deploy Partner)
One of the newest Qonnect Deploy Partners, Natural Synergies (http://www.naturalsynergies.com/) exemplifies the passion people have for QlikView. Natural Synergies is a QlikView consulting firm, founded by Phil Bishop, a former QlikTech employee and Oleg Troyansky, a former QlikTech customer. Working together with their clients, Natural Synergies consultants help to discover and build new synergies between data, people and processes to produce unprecedented results using QlikView.
"Again and again, we develop analysis models for our clients that they simply could not achieve before QlikView," said Bishop. "And because QlikView can be deployed in a matter of weeks, clients are able to effectively apply the insights to their respective businesses almost immediately."
Sage Software (OEM Partner)
Sage (http://www.sagesoftware.com/index.cfm) is a world-leading supplier of accounting and business management software to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Sage helps customers run their businesses more effectively, helping them to gain greater insight into their business activities and providing them with lasting benefits by automating their business processes. A Qonnect OEM Partner, Sage has several solutions - including customer relationship management (CRM), healthcare and non-profit - that are "Powered by QlikView" for enhanced analysis.
"With 3.1 million CRM customers, Sage knows that simplicity is key for broad user acceptance," said David van Toor, General Manager for Sage CRM Solutions at Sage Software.
"Our use of QlikView provides our customers with intuitive and visual analysis." Van Toor was a featured keynote speaker at the Qonnections 2008 Americas User Conference. http://www.qlikcommunity.com/989/
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QlikView South Africa is the local representative and distributor for QlikView, the world's fastest-growing business intelligence software (IDC) and South Africa's preferred business intelligence tool (ITWeb Survey 2008).
QlikView simplifies analysis for everyone and works the way your mind works - making associations by connecting data from many sources in a few clicks. This patented in-memory association technology brings fast results and better decision-making to a wide range of customers and industries. QlikView is intuitive to learn, simple to modify and can be deployed in less than a week.
QlikView is the flagship product of QlikTech, which has more than 7 400 customers in 83 countries and more than 500 partners worldwide. QlikTech was founded in Lund, Sweden, and is headquartered in Radnor, PA (USA), with direct operations throughout Europe. QlikTech offers a fully functional, free trial of QlikView and a 30-day money-back guarantee. For more information, please visit www.qlikview.com.
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