KLAUS DISCOVERS EPICOR'S VAR PROGRAM
CEO George Klaus has finally owned up to the fact that has company has a channel program, following Epicor's Five-Star award for Epicor's Partners for Growth Program. Now, this is very strange since Klaus has spent much of his time during Webcasts telling investors and Wall Street that the company is totally direct sales. Now, Klaus said he's proud of the channel program. But it's a strange pride. The company didn't issue a public statement when it named Sam Montana to head its worldwide channel in January nor has it issued a press release to announce the program, that I can find on Epicor's Web site.
During the third-quarter conference call last fall, Klaus said in no uncertain terms to analysts that Epicor was a direct sales organization. It's a theme that he has hammered during several of these presentations telling Wall Street that when customers deal with other vendors it deals with VARs; when it deals with Epicor, it deals with the company. I'd think could VARs could sell against Epicor by quoting its CEO. Maybe this program was one reason the emphatic message about direct sales didn't come up in Epicor's 2009 earnings Webcast.
