Direct sales are no longer good enough for a Cambridge, Ont.-based network management software company.
“We’re moving from a direct model, which is 80 per cent of our business now, to a channel model,” says Brent Drewry, vice-president of sales and marketing of Logisense Corp.
“We want to reverse that in three years.”
As a first step, it has signed Marketlink Contact Services of Sandy, Utah as a channel aggregator to drive leads for resellers of Logisense’s engageIP network services optimization products: Cache Server, Traffic Manager and Web Filter.
Within 18 months, Drewry hopes to have his channel sales up to 50 per cent of revenues, and 18 months later to 80 percent.
The company chose Marketlink because of its ability to take it to those targets in a phased approach, he said.
In the first phase, leads will come from Marketlink’s partners, while in the second phase Logisense will take advantage of Marketlink’s full sales cycle management. In addition, Drewry hopes to establish partnerships with major companies like Microsoft Corp., IBM Corp. and Cisco Systems, believing Logisense’s applications fit with their products.
Using Marketlink will get his company into the channel faster than if it had tried to do it alone, he explained.
“Our engageIP point solutions are good for a traditional reseller who wants to take a pre-packaged product and provide immediate value to their customer,” he said.
Until now, Logisense has focused on the mid-market service providers, Drewry said. However, it wants to move into the enterprise with bundled suites at vertical markets.
For example, Vancouver-based Prolan Network Services Inc. recently chose Logisense’s HotSpot Suite billing and optimization software to build WiFi hotspots for BWireless across the country.
The suite was also chosen by Inviz Network Inc., which has installed WiFi hot spots in several California hotels.</