General Consultant Discussion

I wonder if its an acquisition or if it's a new member of their ""partner"" program.

We'll know when they release their financials. That's what I love about public companies.

It's interesting to me how ""chatty"" Jeff is with SWK's business activities. He sent a press release out regarding their proposed acquisition of ISM. and they send out press releases for all their office acquisitions. Does the channel really care? It certainly isn't an SEC mandate that he send out PRs for everything. In reality, for every office that SWK announces they've acquired, DSD has acquired 2 or 3. I think that it's bad business on Jeff's part to tell his competitors all about his M&A strategy. The only possible benefit is that other partners could look at all the activity and think that they might benefit from coming on board with SWK. But the bottom line for that will always be what a partner's experience has been in working with SWK in the past. The question is: Does making an announcement help SWK sell more products to their prospects? I'd say likely not. Prospects in their NJ office could probably not care less if Jeff just acquired an office in Texas. Jeff comes from the old school of ""any PR is good PR"". On this I'd have to disagree. Wayne, I'd love to hear how the new ""acquisition"" is being characterized in their financials.

My reaction as a Sage business partner is not positive when I see this. Then again, our organization is not exactly the same, since we are part of a large CPA firm and would not be looking at that type of relationship.

I guess you got the release too. I see this is a pretty small acquisition - 20 accounts.

Point solutions has a POS system called Fusion for sage 500 and supposedly sage 100. We installed at a 100 customer and it was a disaster. Now SWK wii be supporting 2 not ready for prime time POS systems.

@MikeFitzgerald Was the disaster before or after Point Solutions purchased Fusion from the previous owner/developer? I understood it was a mess and Point improved it (the software, not the mess).

Pretty sure we were dealing with Point Solutions, when did they acquire the product? Hopefully it is improved. The product was not ready and promises were made that were not met. Ended up losing the customer - not saying Fusion POS was the only reason, but it was a big part.

It looks to me like they bought 20 Sage accounts, did an ROR change on them, and hired a consultant that will reside in Point Solutions office. Point Solutions is focused on taking Fusion to the next level called Fusion Retail Management which I'll bet SWK is no part of.

Or maybe SWK is looking for a migration product for HTI POS ->

Funny, was literally about to post the same thing. I tell you, Bob Scott gets alot of his facts wrong on these things after you do some digging.

Looks like SWK did not buy the POS - only some accounts and local talent.

According to the notice from Point Solutions, they sold the reseller division to focus on their POS development which means they are immediately competing with SWK for point of sale solutions.

So, SWK purchased Point Solutions' EUs, in order to allow Point Solutions to focus all their energy on making FusionRMS better, so that they could, conceivably, do a better job of blowing SWK POS out of the water? This just keeps getting curioser and curioser.

One consultant + 20 EU's = 1 ""Division"". I guess that makes us a Conglomerate. ;)

Perhaps even a multi-national corporation @BobPfahnl Guess this isn't much different than when SWK would issue a press release for each Mapadoc they sold. Picking up somebody's 20 customers of which probably 5-10 do any meaningful activity is hardly an earth shattering Bob Scott newsworthy event...

So basically they hired a new employee and a few customers came along with him. I agree with @DougDeane, something odd about SWK helping a POS competitor. Wonder if part of deal is some kickback on transferring HT users over to Fusion to help SWK get out from under supporting the old HT product?