Sage Enterprise

Sage Enterprise Software Middle East has expanded its presence in Saudi Arabia, with the signing of a new enterprise partner in the Kingdom. Jeddah-based Modern Computers & Communications (MCC) has been appointed as a reseller for Sage’s enterprise resource planning software for the country, Sage’s second enterprise partner in Saudi.

MCC will be targeting mid-to-large scale Sage Enterprise in the country, as it sees the demand increasing in these markets. “Definitely there is a market there [for ERP],” explained Nasser Jamil Bayram, executive vice president of MCC. “We are targeting distribution, manufacturing, service providers, transportation organisations. These are the companies that have vision, strategy, they know what they want, they understand technology, not only from a technical perspective but from a business value perspective as well.”

To meet Sage’s partner requirements, MCC has employed and trained a number of extra staff for sales, pre-sales and consultancy roles focused on Sage. The company has also installed Sage ERP for one of its sister companys, as a reference site and test ground for MCC.

“In Saudi, doing a sales pitch is easy, but customers want proof. Once we tell them that we have implemented Sage for a sister company, it closes the sale for us,” Bayram said.

Sage Enterprise has been selective in appointing partners in the region, after switching from a direct sales model in 1999. The latest appointment will complete its channel structure for Saudi Arabia, according to Shishir Srivastava, director of operations for Sage. “The way we work is we have fewer partners, but larger ones—the minimum number of people that an Sage Enterprise partner needs to have is ten, dedicated to Sage sales, marketing, support and implementation. Both [our Saudi partners] are huge organisations, with tremendous brand names, extremely financially stable, and the capacity to invest in our business, so I think that as far as Saudi is concerned, we will leave it at that for some time,” he said.

The company will also leverage its enterprise partners to expand into other territories, Srivastava said. “We have no plans to appoint territorial partners for enterprise solutions in the smaller countries, if we have to have a presence in one of these smaller countries, it makes sense for us to approach Jordan and Lebanon through MCC.”