What if the Academy Awards went to the actors who donated the most to the Motion Picture Academy? Or if you could buy a Grammy for a few thousand bucks? While it’d sure be cool to have one of those on our mantel, it just wouldn’t mean as much if it were bought and paid for rather than earned. Unfortunately, we feel a bit that way about some of the accounting software awards. Most of them are what we call pay-to-play, in other words, you don’t get to promote your win until you pay the sponsor a licensing fee. Others rank winners solely by annual revenue.
What do you think? How important is it that your VAR have software award badges plastered on their website? Are other attributes more important to you?
At BT Partners, we don’t pay a lot of attention to the various VAR awards. But it’s not because we aren’t being recognized, it’s because we’re too busy helping our clients grow and increasing our own skillsets. It’s the frequent thanks and appreciation we get from our clients that matters most to us. So when we get tagged with one of the software awards, like Accounting Today’s VAR 100, we smile, give nods of appreciation all around, and get back to work.
We firmly believe that a firm’s annual revenue should not be the primary measure of its success — particularly since it doesn’t take into account how well it serves its clients. BT Partners understands that our organization — just like yours — will only be successful if it continually invests in itself. It is only by constantly innovating, reaching, and testing the limits that a business can scale profitably. When someone starts issuing awards based on those attributes, we’ll start paying more attention. Until then, our rewards will come from helping our clients transform their financial operations and prepare themselves for long-term growth and success. All that may not fit on the mantel, but it’s so much more meaningful.
To that end we stay out in front of technology trends, solutions, and productivity tools that matter to our clients —from ERP and financial management software to Business Intelligence and productivity tools. Rather than buying awards, we invest in our professional services teams, our engineers, and our support staff.
We’d love to hear from you. How much stock do you put in the various VAR awards? Is partner revenue the best measure of success?
