Intacct, an accounting and finance SaaS provider, has rolled out a new channel program designed to build channel loyalty through an annuity revenue plan that boosts margins.

Jerry Jalaba, the company's vice president of channel sales, said under Intacct's new business solution partner program "a partner can share in the revenue stream of every one of their customer wins."

Jalaba added, "Most programs today in the SaaS world provide either a finder's fee or a gradually reduced fee in subsequent years tied to multi-year commitments." Intacct partners, on the other hand, will receive a revenue stream for as long as the business remains a user, which in the SMB space is typically between five and seven years.

Jalaba said partner margins start at 30 percent and rise to 40 percent as business grows.

VARs are able to sell and implement the Intacct solution on a standalone basis or in conjunction with other solutions such as CRM and human resources. Jalaba is targeting the top 5 to 7 percent of the more than 10,000 companies that provide accounting and ERP solutions in North America. The company hopes to attract between 500 and 1,000 partners during the next year. That will set the stage for Intacct to use the channel for more than 50 percent of its bookings by the end of 2009. That's a significant shift from the present model, which sees most of the company's sales going direct.

Jalaba said that Intacct's direct sales force will be compensated equally for channel and non-channel sales, an attempt to minimize channel conflict and insure that sales leads get passed through the channel.

"We are creating a completely channel-neutral plan for our direct sales team," Jalaba explained. "We have a sales organization financially motivated to make partners successful and provide those partners sales, consulting and systems engineering support in order to grow our business together."

The program includes intensive product training and certification, along with advanced web training. The financial management applications are pre-integrated with some leading applications such as salesforce.com and feature an open interface for additional integration. Jalaba said Intacct has established strong alliances with complimentary providers such as CompuPay, Boomi and Adaptive Planning.

Before joining Intacct, Jalaba built a channel program for Postini, a security vendor that was acquired by Google.

TAGS: Google, Salesforce.com, SaaS, SMB, Intacct

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