ISV Benefits From Purchasing Hardware + Accessories From One Vendor
By Kyle Lauber, Star Micronics
Many ISVs are caught in an exhausting loop; hardware integration, support, and management can quickly become a herculean task. However, with the right partner, it can be nearly effortless. With the right partnership, you can purchase all your hardware and accessories from a single vendor for integration with your software and reap several business benefits. Keep reading to discover what they are.
One Integration, Access To All Available Vendor Peripherals
When choosing a potential vendor partnership, ISVs must be strategic and choose wisely. You don't want to partner with someone that will make the process difficult and confusing with multiple integrations and limited peripherals.
The best vendor partnership allows one-time integration with your software and grants you access to their entire line of hardware and peripherals. By doing this, ISVs can reduce the headache of managing multiple integration partners for hardware and accessories, making the process effortless and straightforward.
A Single Point Of Contact
In a successful vendor partnership, communication is critical. You don't want to partner with a vendor that is difficult to get ahold of or whose contacts are inconsistent and all over the place. When choosing among vendors, ensure the one you partner with is always on standby through a single point of contact. A single contact means a single call for support and maintenance as well as integration support. This will keep the lines of communication open so that you can easily communicate updates and changes as they happen.
In addition to having a single point of contact, having a primary contact for your vendor at your organization also can help build a good relationship between you and your vendor partner. To ensure your partnership's success, it's essential to choose a vendor with an excellent reputation for first-class integration support, including SDKs, drivers, and other integration tools to assist you when you need it most.
Backward And Forward Compatibility
The right vendor should have the experience, innovative solutions, and resources to help your business grow. A single vendor that is always innovating and growing will ensure that your software always integrates with the industry's latest, most modern technology. However, a great vendor partner also will ensure legacy hardware compatibility.
This ensures that your software continues to run on and support legacy platforms for customers who aren't ready to or can't afford to upgrade yet. It also enables ISVs to upsell or cross-sell (either directly or through a dealer channel) the latest industry technology—keeping your software relevant and innovative.
Choose A Vendor Partnership Dedicated To Growth And Support
Successful partnerships are mutually beneficial; a vendor partner's success is dependent upon your success. When choosing a vendor, it's important to determine if the vendor truly values the partnership and ensure that the benefits are not one-sided. It is critical to select a vendor partner who has a history of building and maintaining successful, long-term commitments with ISV channel partners. While looking for the perfect partner, if you can't see how the partnership can help you advance your business, keep looking until you find a partner that will.
About The Author
Kyle Lauber, PMP, is the Associate Product Manager at Star Micronics. Kyle has been in the industry since 2017 and has experience in every aspect of Star’s business. At Star, Kyle started as a Marketing Coordinator, writing blogs, social media posts, and creating webpages. Since then, Kyle has grown with Star, adding many skills to his expertise including in-depth product knowledge, new product development, and project management experience using his PMP certificate.