Need Help?

As a VAR, your livelihood centers around building relationships. You need to develop relationships with your customers, as well as with your technology vendors and distributors. This can be a tough balancing act - considering all of your other responsibilities. Here, at Business Solutions, we realize your challenge and want to help you with this task. The magazine was founded for the sole purpose of helping connect VARs with technology vendors. In recent years, our mission has evolved into more than just producing a magazine that displays the successes of VAR/vendor partnerships. Business Solutions has helped establish a regular dialogue in the channel to promote better relationships between vendors and VARs. Here are ways you can benefit from our efforts.

Finding The Products/Vendors You Need
A few years ago Business Solutions' staff started calling our readers looking for interesting VAR companies to profile and installations to cover. We discovered that the majority of our VAR readers were often investigating new products and vendors. To help with these searches, we offered to pass on their company information and needs to vendors who could help. Many readers took us up on the offer.

This exchange of information led to many successful partnerships between vendors and VARs. Seeing the long-term benefit this could bring to the channel, Business Solutions started making these calls a regular occurrence. Today, we speak with about 100 readers monthly. VARs, like you, are contacted to see if they need any assistance with finding products or identifying vendors.

Some of you may have been contacted in the past by our staff. But, it only seems fair that we should open the lines of communication for you to contact us with your product or vendor needs. There are three ways to reach us. You can call or e-mail me (see my contact information at the end of this column). Or you can visit us online at www.BusinessSolutionsMag.com and click on the "Solutions Locator" button to fill out a form detailing your needs. Whichever method you choose, make sure to include your phone number so we can follow up with you.

Events Designed To Partner VARs With Vendors
Face-to-face meetings are also a great venue for establishing relationships between vendors and VARs. During the past few years, Business Solutions has partnered with some industry organizations to design events specifically for the channel. The Executive Marketing Summit, now in its third year, is an event designed to bring automatic identification and data collection VARs and vendors together to network and discuss pressing issues facing that industry. For more information go to www.quadII.com. The Channel Connection, now in its seventh year, is an event at the AIIM show designed to help network enterprise content management VARs with vendors. For more information go to www.aiim.org and search for channel connection.

But, the opportunities for VARs don't end there. This year, Business Solutions formed a special relationship with Gartner's Vision Events. This company founded VARVision and EnterpriseVision, an event where VARs can preview new channel products and vendors. With these events, hosted four times a year, qualified VARs have an opportunity to visit a resort location where they have private boardroom meetings with vendors.

At Business Solutions, we believe our responsibility to assist VARs in establishing relationships with vendors is ongoing. We want to build a community among VARs and vendors and want your input on how we can help.