With so many vendors and distributors these days having SME-focused authorisation or sales incentive programmes for resellers the channel appears to be valued as the major route to the SME market.

It also indicates that vendors want more control over where products and services are going and how they are being delivered, and to know who is actually buying them.

It makes sense for vendors to take a more active interest in the sales and marketing of their products. And ultimately resellers should benefit.

Management of programmes themselves and of whole products is key.

It makes sense, too, given figures released by Benchmark Software showing that, out of 400 SMEs surveyed, 39 per cent had bought software they had never used.

Some 89 per cent said this was because it was difficult to use, while 56 per cent said the software was not what they had expected.

"As the UK SME software market was estimated to be worth £4.1bn last year, this means that SMEs in the UK could be wasting £1.5bn buying software they never use," says Simon Harvey, managing director of Benchmark.

So there is reason enough for vendors, especially software vendors, to take a more active interest in SME customers and not just leave the reseller to his own devices.

Some vendors think resellers are to blame for this, but generally there is a perception that vendors should take the rap for not providing the right support infrastructure for the channel and not ensuring there is a common thread running through the whole value chain.

The idea behind many of the programmes on offer today is to meet this educational, sales and marketing shortfall.

It's not about stealing contacts or muscling in on resellers with a view to direct selling. It is essentially about helping resellers sell more products in what has proved to be a stubborn market.

Despite attempts by some vendors to reach this sector through direct sales teams, the sheer scale of the task makes it not only a logistical nightmare but costly too.

Firms have realised over time that potentially lucrative SMEs are serviced better by resellers with local or vertical knowledge, or both.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and with competition for the SME sector hotter than it has ever been, vendors are not so much wooing the channel as grabbing it with both hands and feeding it a whole menu of SME-focused services.

In some cases this has meant shedding direct sales in favour of the channel and ensuring that, for sales to the SME sector at least, there is no conflict.

It is a situation faced by messaging firm Mirapoint, which has launched an SME email security product called Razorgate and, with it, a channel-only sales programme.

"If we were to attempt to deliver products to the SME market directly, we would have to expand dramatically the sales team to unmanageable levels, and the cost of new business would become prohibitive," says Jamie Cowper, channel manager EMEA at Mirapoint.

"By offering products as a channel-only solution, we are able to partner with a wide range of companies to take us into these important business areas."

To reach the SME market, Mirapoint needs to deal with companies that have the loyalty of their customers too.

"SMEs rely on good resellers to offer them a range of products and services, and when considering a new product area, such as email security, will instinctively go back to a trusted partner," says Cowper.

This is not unusual. This premise forms the basis of vendor and distributor thinking when it comes to offering resellers a set support programme.

Schemes can vary from company to company, especially when it comes to Ts&Cs. But essentially they all tend to cover the same territory, including pre-sales consultancy, training, support and co-op marketing.

The problem many vendors have is how to tailor specific SME programmes to a broad base of resellers.

A 'one programme fits all' approach is not really the answer, but many vendors find it is easier to set up and manage.

"There are more exceptions than there are rules," says Ian Kilpatrick, chairman of Wick Hill Group.

"Many programmes are putting a structure on something that is unstructurable. It won't fit like that so there has to be some flexibility."

Kilpatrick talks from experience, as his company has helped formulate programmes that include not only standard technical support, pre-sales consultancy and demo kit but specialist support to cover vertical sectors such as health and education.

"The SME stuff doesn't have a lot of margin so you have to help resellers help you by coming up with plans and programmes that can help add value," notes Kilpatrick.

While helping resellers to add value is a worthy crusade, many businesses also see programmes as an opportunity to capture the attention of resellers in what is a very competitive space.

If vendors get it right it can work a treat. But resellers cannot expect these programmes to do all the work for them.

Most vendors claim that perhaps the biggest request from the channel is lead generation, but the idea is to increase co-operation.

Sony reseller NCE has rebuilt its business with the help of a closer association with Sony's storage products and sales and marketing muscle, which NCE UK sales manager John Greenwood believes is head and shoulders above some other storage vendors that he refuses to name.

"Sony's brand name is renowned, and we get a lot of technical, sales and marketing support," he explains.

"We don't get the same support from other vendors. A lot of them don't have the visibility of where their products go, so we see it as a two-way game, giving Sony feedback in return."

NCE is a top-level Sony-accredited reseller, spearheading Sony's drive to get more SMEs migrating away from Digital Data Storage across to advanced intelligent tape, which accounts for its high level of support from the vendor.

Like many vendors, Sony grades its support depending on the type of reseller it is working with. It is now trying to recruit another 700 partners for its basic level-one reseller scheme.

Helping resellers sell into SMEs has to be the key reason behind any programme or, for that matter, any relationship at any level that vendors and distributors have with their channel.

Bal Phull, marketing communications manager at wireless vendor D-Link, says his company tries to equip its resellers "with the right tools, so life becomes somewhat easier".

Programmes are also a good way for vendors to attract new resellers, and for resellers to look at offering new services and products complimentary to their existing portfolios.

Chris Jagusz, general manager of chapter management at BTIC, says that in his company's campaign leading up to Christmas it opened up its broadband portfolio for sale by any reseller.

"Resellers, whether they had previously sold BT products or not, could qualify for an incentive scheme where they could earn up to £100 for every broadband installation made," he says.

"For the channel this offered a good reason to try its hand at a new service, while for BT it grew the broadband reseller base substantially.

"We supported resellers with web-based seminars on identifying and selling broadband applications, plus the usual collateral and technical support. As a direct result of the campaign, we were able to double the weekly run rate of broadband connections."

This opening of new avenues for resellers is key to how vendors see this market. Vendors need to broaden their base if they are to maximise investment in SME products, which has two-way benefits.

Check Point has recently added a Small Business Partner level to its partner programme.

Aimed at resellers selling into SMEs, it is helping the company's drive into this part of the market, following the launch of its Express and Safe@Office products.

"As the programme is aimed at resellers whose core business may not be selling security, the requirements are not as demanding as for other Check Point partner accreditation levels," points out Dave Ellis, director of e-security at distributor Unipalm.

"This makes good sense because this type of reseller will not want to put two or three engineers through several days' training and bear the costs that go along with that."

After years of telling resellers to specialise, vendors are now hankering after a broad base of localised resellers capable of helping them reach this seemingly unattainable market.

The brand names, of course, have an advantage here, and it is no surprise that companies such as Microsoft, HP, Cisco and Intel all have substantial channel interests in the SME area and generous channel programmes for resellers.

Microsoft has always been a keen advocate of empowering the SME channel, from its dedicated system builder unit through to the larger SME resellers.

The company made some comprehensive changes to its channel policies last year, forcing resellers through re-accreditation and generally raising the bar in terms of the skills needed to gain Gold Partner status in particular.

Much of this work is in progress now, and Microsoft believes it is a way of ensuring end-user satisfaction, which will ultimately reward the resellers.

One for small
HP has also embarked on a reseller programme, aimed at easing channel tension over its use of direct sales for some lines.

The PartnerOne programme will see HP Services working with European resellers to offer more training in deployment of infrastructure, services and support.

Vendors want their channel to offer good representation of their own business, almost as if they were part of the company themselves.

It's also a stance taken by Intel with its SME builder programme.

Nigel Towell, Intel's channel marketing manager EMEA, claims its resellers need not only support in terms of technical training, they need help in breaking down the barriers of the SME market through education and marketing.

This is where the company is currently channelling its efforts through the Accelerate Your Business campaign.

"Our role is to help the channel make their customers aware of new products and to convince the SMEs to refresh the large number of older PCs out there running on older operating systems," states Towell.

He admits that Intel is more campaign-driven than offering specific grades of Intel partnerships, although it does have the Premier Partner programme.

The key for Intel, according to Towell, "is to not look at things in isolation. Although we have a main partner programme, the idea is to simultaneously look at new tools and initiatives and knit them into any offerings that are on the reseller's table."

Sophos is another company that has shifted away from direct sales and into a channel-only route to market.

It has three levels within its programme, according to Oliver Carter, UK sales manager. Resellers fit into the categories dependent on a number of criteria, including size, value-added ability and existing sales relationship with Sophos.

The Sophos Authorised Resellers, of which there are about 500, are part of a remote programme with computer-based training and remote access to an account manager.

Sophos offers its higher-graded resellers more support in the form of access to pre-sales support and product specialists, as well as co-op marketing funds and the ability to offer customers seminar and demo facilities at its offices.

This is open to its 'invitation-only' Certified Partners, of which there are only about 25, although the company is aware it has many more resellers that buy 'as and when' and are not positioned within the authorisation structure.

In fact SME programmes are coming thick and fast. IBM is revamping its various channel programmes to try to provide a "bit more common sense" to its SME channel structure.

The company has invested $500m in demand generation, education, teaming and sales incentives for its Business Partners selling to SMEs under the Solutions Builder Express banner.

Toshiba, too, has launched a new scheme called Freedom Partner Programme, aimed at "driving the implementation of business-critical mobile and wireless products, services and solutions in the SME market".

And Cisco has launched an initiative to link customers with direct-marketing resellers and entered a collaboration with Microsoft to target SMEs and feed leads to resellers.

Cisco subsidiary Linksys has unveiled its Partner Connection Programme, while Quantum, Xerox, Lexmark, Trend Micro, Brother, NetScreen and 3Com are just some of the other names to have unveiled SME-focused channel strategies, recently giving a good indication that this is a market the industry is taking very seriously.

Partner and parcel
Distributors Computer 2000 (C2000), Ideal Hardware, Ingram Micro and equIP each have specific SME programmes and offer primarily lead-generation services.

This, according to C2000 general manager for marketing Nigel Judd, is the key requirement for resellers working in the SME space.

C2000 has about 120 Business Class resellers that have met the company's criteria of having a certain number of vendor accreditations, a reasonable credit limit, and being SME-focused and a regular customer.

"We do not promise the earth and deliver nothing," argues Judd. "We promise a few things, in particular regular leads and marketing support, and we deliver."

Judd focuses on resellers with no marketing experience and limited resources to find new business, and has implemented the Microsoft CRM programme to help manage it.

The lead-generation team is also concentrating on SMEs with no IT manager, to try to educate them on the benefits of various systems and applications.

Judd's message is that schemes of this nature should be small and manageable.

So what makes the essential SME reseller programme?

The fundamentals of lead generation, training, marketing collateral, pre- and post-sales support plus demo stock are almost taken as read. In addition, no reseller would want exclusivity demands placed upon them.

However, they would welcome more proactive help with marketing and their own lead generation service.

Ultimately it comes down to resources. Not everyone is Computacenter, especially when it comes to servicing SMEs.

If a vendor's channel programme is going to help resellers with training and pre- and post-sales support that actually helps the reseller win a sale, then why not?

It will come down to what is best for your business, and vendors and distributors alike are waking up to the fact that these programmes can work as long as they have flexibility and are managed properly.

"Programmes for partners selling to the SME not only work, they are vital," comments Jim Darragh, Computer Associates' director of channel sales in the UK.

"With an approachable market that we believe contains somewhere in the region of 2.5 million companies, you absolutely need to know who you are selling to and why."

It therefore has to be a two-way game. The programmes are there to help facilitate this game.