Microsoft's Paul White: ERP VARs Will Not Survive in SMB Market Without Scale or Verticalization
In his recent blog post around the Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 beta release, Paul White, Microsoft's senior director of ERP product management, noted that business process outsourcing in small and mid-market (SMB) businesses is a key factor driving ERP requirements. But in a newly posted interview given at Convergence 2012, White expanded on his view of those trends and the profound impact he believes they will have on determining which partner organizations that can survive as ERP resellers to the SMB market over the long term.
The interview, conducted by Anya Ciecierski of ERPSoftwareBlog and CAL Business Solutions, focused the evolving ERP buying habits and engagement patterns of small and mid-size businesses. White's answers indicate he believes significant changes are coming to the SMB market, including to the types of companies that can survive as ERP resellers. He forecasts the effects of enterprise cloud solutions on buyers' overall expectations of software value and suggests a trend toward something like ERP commoditization, especially filtering down into supply chains and through existing service provider channels like accounting and banking.
Here's White's overall view of the ERP industry for SMB customers:
"Our industry has spent the last 20 years serving SMBs through relatively small local regional VARs or SIs but we see that model changing beyond all recognition. We don't consider the economics for small local regional VARs will survive for much longer, you have to have scale. In our minds we see new channel partners emerging. We think SMBs will look to different ...
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