SAN JOSE, CALIF. – You might not know of ERPGuru of Montreal, but that’s about to change.
ERPGuru, a 65 person solution provider, just happens to be NetSuite’s top partner. The San Meteo, Calif.-based cloud financials and ERP vendor selects its top partner by combining revenue and company headcount metrics to determine who’s on top.
Another reason why you may not have heard of ERPGuru is that more than 80 per cent of the company’s sales are in the U.S.
Company founder and president Martin McNicoll told CDN that his first NetSuite sale was to a Quebec company, but his second was in Atlanta and its hasn’t stopped.
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The former CGI executive began servicing and eventually reselling NetSuite after a chance meeting with the CEO Zach Nelson.
“I went on vacation in 2005 and decided to just drop in on NetSuite. I got to meet Zach and when he saw that I was from Quebec he was excited to show me the first ever French interface for NetSuite. So I just jumped on the bus,” McNicoll said.
His original plan was to introduce NetSuite to the Quebec market, but quickly realized because of the software’s cloud-based system customers from the U.S. where calling him for implementation, deployment and consulting.
In 2005, ERPGuru was run out of McNicoll’s basement and from that time he has been able to double his business each year just on NetSuite.
NetSuite channel chief Craig West told CDN that he expects ERPGuru to hit 100 people by the end of this year.
“NetSuite is a big app but it can go international and with SuiteCommerce it’s the type of app that you can build a company around and you can’t do that with any other cloud company. Look at ERPGuru in Canada, they have the ambition to be a big company and they did it with NetSuite,” West said.
McNicoll added that he always wanted to add another vendor solution to round out the company’s portfolio but could never find the time to evaluate other products because he was so busy just selling NetSuite.
Recently, ERPGuru acquired Toronto-based NetSuite partner Netstra to grow its base. But, that’s not the only way McNicoll plans to grow his company. He is also targeting multi-national audit, tax and accounting firms who have customers who want NetSuite but not necessarily have the know-how on how to integrate it within the company.
McNicoll’s business model has the accounting firm capture the 50 per cent first year margin NetSuite offers, while ERPGuru makes money off its consulting services.
He is also actively recruiting network solution providers across Canada with the same model.
“I run my business on NetSuite, but when I show potential customers the product they can immediately see the business reasons for it. Where else can you get an integrate dashboard with a view of your entire business on one page?”
ERPGuru just open its main U.S. office in Manchester, N.H. with a satellite office in Chicago.
And, it looks like McNicoll will finally get his second product. He plans to sign up with Autodesk, which forged an integration partnership agreement with NetSuite for its new solution for manufacturing.