Canon signs up as Australian Equitrac reseller

Canon Australia has signed up as an official reseller of US document accounting software provider Equitrac.

Peter Matthews, software, services and solutions market segment manager at Canon Australia's business imaging solutions group, said Canon had worked with Equitrac on a deal by deal basis, but had now signed a formal partnership agreement.

The group has agreed to resell Equitrac document accounting software direct to end users in such sectors as general office-type businesses, SMBs and specific vertical markets, he said.

In return, Equitrac would provide third-level support and train the group's 150 salespeople, he said.

"We expect this whole range of [document accounting] software and services to generate five percent of our revenue by the end of this year and move to 10 percent next year," Matthews said.

Equitrac would be the sixth third party vendor Canon's business imaging solutions group resold and the first official third party vendor signing for document accounting software, he said.

"Businesses are looking to transform their processes, by integrating paper and digital documents such as audio or video files," Matthews said. "We don't just provide point solutions, like some of our competitors, but combinations of software, hardware and services."

Brendan Sparks, marketing executive for third party software at Canon Australia's business imaging solutions group, said Equitrac document accounting software complemented Canon's own document accounting product, NetSpot Accountant.

"Equitrac gives us access to a bigger area of the market, such as mixed-fleet customers," he said. "We are talking about customers that might have Ricohs, Konicas, Xeroxes as well as Canon."

Equitrac was not vendor-specific and as far as he knew did not have other direct resellers in Australia, Sparks said.

Matthews said Canon Australia had reported a 9.1 percent increase in total revenue for the 2003 calendar year. The local business imaging solutions group had reaped $455 million in the 2003 year, up six percent from 2002.

Canon's faster growth overall was largely due to the demand for digital cameras and similar consumer offerings, he said.