"ERP vendors' channel strategies have been somewhat ad hoc," said Matt Reaves, director of software and solutions marketing at  Pioneer-Standard, Cleveland.  While Reaves has no distribution agreements with ERP vendors, the distributor has informal working relationships with SSA Baan Co., SAP AG, Oracle/PeopleSoft Inc., and is "setting some groundwork" for future agreements. 

Reaves said ERP and customer relationship management (CRM) Web-enablement, will be top projects for VARs and distributors in this year.  MOCA division and Pioneer-Standard Electronics said they are in ongoing discussions with ERP vendors but thus far have no formal distribution agreements with them.  Hall-Mark has never had a formal relationship with any ERP vendor, but continues to investigate relationships with top ISVs, said Rick Hamada, president, North America, at Tempe, Ariz.-based Hall-Mark.  "ERP is one segment of a number of ISV relationships that we'll be looking to package up for our VARs in the future," said Hamada. "ERP will be part of it, but not an exclusive focus.

"While companies still are spending money on ERP implementations, other areas such as CRM and E-business are attracting larger slices of IT budgets, said Hamada.Many customers are focused on the front end, aiming to "Web-ize" their businesses rather than spending money at the back end on ERP, Munro said.  Distributors also blame uncertainty surrounding a slowdown in the ERP market. Regardless, Savoir is in discussions with SAA Baan, Munro said.

SSA Global (Baan) has cut its U.S. distribution partners to one,GE IT Distribution Group, Boulder, Colo. "We've seen Baan as a kernel product that we'll build a practice around," said Michael Minard, executive vice president of enterprise solutions at GE IT Distribution.  Baan dropped Ingram Micro Inc., Santa Ana, Calif., but the vendor retained Ingram Micro in Canada, said Bob Bennett, vice president and general manager of Ingram Micro's Enterprise Solutions Group. "Baan is not a shrink-wrapped product, and it's difficult to put it through the distribution channel," Bennett said. Baan did not fit the way we would have liked. It's a changing world out there, and we have to find what is a nice fit."VARs that work with ERP said the benefit of working with distribution is customization. "They preconfigure the software and drop ship it, locked and loaded, customer-configured"