Acumatica has a 100% channel strategy, but that makes it even more imperative to maximize the efficiency of their partners, and Boguszewski has some plans in this regard.
CJ Boguszewski, VP of partner strategy and programs, Acumatica
Earlier this year, cloud ERP vendor Acumatica named CJ Boguszewski as their new vice president of partner strategy and programs, where he will be responsible for Acumatica’s partner go-to-market strategy. Acumatica has had a 100% Go-to-Market strategy for years, and that won’t be changing. Boguskezwki does, however, intend to make some tweaks to the channel program to improve efficiency, particularly with respect to SMBs.
Most of Acumatica’s customers would fall into the SMB space.
“Our customers are businesses that typically run on QuickBooks until they can’t do it any longer,” Boguszewski said. “In our space, we primarily compete with Microsoft, Netsuite, and Sage. We are, however, the only vendor in this space that is 100% indirect. Direct-indirect conflicts are not insubstantial. We don’t have a single direct sales person, so we don’t compete with the channel. I came here because that’s the type of company I want to help to grow.”
Acumatica’s channel is not huge, but it is productive.
“We have around 350 partners, but we have gotten tens of thousands of customers through them,” Boguszewski said. “These are primarily in construction, distribution, and retail, and we are coming up to speed on the manufacturing side. Addressing the SMB business long tail makes sense with our market.
“We see Canada as an important area for growth for us,” Boguszewski added. “We currently have ten partners in Canada, and there is a Canadian partner account manager.”
Boguszewski takes over the responsibility for the design and ownership of Acumatica’s VAR partner program, including incentives, certification, recruitment, enablement, and activation, with all Acumatica partner and pre-sales resources reporting to him.
“The partner program today is used by us to feed leads and presales support,” he said. “There are a whole range of things that we offer. But as we look at the business, I am in charge of identifying ways by which we can improve our programmatic support to partners. This includes a host of education resources and constant processes by which we can offer ways to do business, and help them with solutions selling as opposed to just facilitating transactional selling.”
Boguszewski emphasized that he will focus his efforts on raising Acumatica’s partner productivity. Prioritizing partners in this way is essential for Acumatica as it is 100% indirect in its sales motion
“This is because we absolutely are committed to the indirect model,” he said. “If a lead doesn’t go right, we cant take it back and give it to our direct folks, because we don’t have any.”
Boguszewski indicated that some enhancements to the partner program were on the horizon.
“Because we deal with small and medium businesses, some of our VARS are also small as well,” he said. “We are looking at developing resources from other partners in a non-competitive way to supplement that. That requires getting partners in non-competitive markets so they can handle deals. This is a strategic initiative that I intend to have happen in the next few months.”
Boguszewski came to Acumatica from Arm, a semiconductor and software design company, where as senior director, he was the head of partners and ecosystem for the non-semiconductor business.
