Happy with your US-based VAR?

jlandeen

This has been a thread that has been running for a long time...and I've only recently started posting on here (instead of just reading) but I thought maybe I'd weigh in with my 3 cents. There are a number of themes that have been touched on in this thread but I think I can sum them up into 3 areas of responsibility - and if each of these groups take responsibility for their area, maybe some projects & relationships wouldn't go off the track (as projects normally don't just fail because of 1 thing...it's normally a few things in concert)

End Customer's Responsibility
- ensure that there are adequate internal resources and political will to execute
- take ownership of the project (don't just think you can pay someone else to do it all for you, only you know your business well enough)
- be careful about selecting the cheapest vendor or solution, your financial package is not something to be cheap with as it is at the heart of your operations
- be flexible and try and start with the easiest things to automate, the more automation and complexity there is, the more things to go wrong
- be honest & upfront about how your business works, and if you don't know figure it out BEFORE you build your solution
- pay your bills on time
- if there are multiple vendors involved: CLEARLY DEFINE RESPONSIBILITIES & SCOPE

Consultants Responsibility
- enusre adequate & experience resources are placed onto a project
- be committed to seeing it through to a successful completion and working through problems when they arise
- try and make the solution only as complicated as it needs to be (i.e. keep it simple, stupid - K.I.S.S method), remember you've got the experience to suggest where to make changes and where NOT to make them
- keep your sales team from making a quick sale and overpromising what you can deliver on!
- be honest & upfront about your capabilities and work towards building a trusting relationship with your client
- do your best to deliver what you promised

Community Responsibility
- Partnersource, Mibuso, Navision.net & the newsgroups are all here for the mutual benefit of everybody
- site your work & where you got it from (don't take credit for something someone else did)
- if you use these sites to help you do your job better, then it's only fair that you contribute something back to them at some point

I find the Navision world tends to be pretty small & interconnected so remember your reputation is important, hopefully everyone can be professional.

landerson

Wow, this conversion has been going on for quite some time. I am with a NCS/VAR out of Boise, ID and have been working with Navision for over 4 yrs. I love the solution and working with it, but have found that it could use some fine tuning. The biggest problem I have found with the clients I have taken over is that there seems to be a disconnect between my contact at the company and the end users. Often times I find that when I am on site speaking directly with users they identify issues that have never been brought to my attention. Sorry, but can help if I don't know there is a problem. As far as dealing with identified issues I agree with everyone in saying that mibuso and navision.net are wonderful resources for solving known issues and I often look to these two places first for a solution. Don't like re-creating the wheel. I emplathize with those of you who are dealing with newer solution centers or who are receiving inadequate support. If you absolutely feel that you would like a new NCS look us up at www.proteantech.com and we would be more than happy to speak with you.