Located just outside York, Pursuit Technology has over 15 years experience in custom data and reporting solutions development on SAP Business Objects Enterprise, SAP Crystal Reports and supporting technologies. Most of the company’s business comes from consultancy and development work and when the requirement to supply 250 licenses for SAP Crystal Server presented itself, Pursuit was eager to help its customer, but needed to find a way to finance this major five-figure sale.
Andrew Baines, Director of Pursuit Technology explains: “The customer is a software developer that supplies schools, which meant that they would not be paid until September. We are relatively small and don’t do that many product sales, so financing the business was an issue. We looked at pushing it out until September, but that wasn’t possible.”
The software supplier needed to install its system and have Crystal Server fully integrated and stable before by the start of the autumn term. Whilst Tech Data could have extended credit to Pursuit, the reseller would have been in a vulnerable position had it passed on the credit to its own customer. Baines had seen email communications and spoken to Tech Data about SAP financing in the past and decided to explore this option.
Getting on board with the SAP financing scheme was easy, he says. “Tech Data simply put us in touch with the relevant people at SAP and after that it was pretty straightforward. There were some small blips but they were soon sorted and in the end the whole process took about two weeks. From our side, it was a doddle.”
With the business successfully financed through SAP, Pursuit was able to deliver the Crystal Server licenses and get paid right away. Its developer customer was able to deliver a fully integrated solution on time and the software company is able to spread the payments for the software over two-years.