Grow your software revenue by selling these 5 affordable, essential tools for the modern workplace

Technology overspend is a problem for all Australian businesses, especially amid current uncertainty and belt-tightening. So resellers need low-cost, high impact software products which suit their clients’ budgets and requirements.

 This includes the productivity, security and collaboration software businesses need to digitise their operations for remote work – tools for everything from managing SharePoint to creating e-signatures, PDFs and videos. And for every large customer willing to pay a premium for these applications, there are hundreds of smaller businesses that may prefer more affordable, simpler options.

 To seize this opportunity, resellers require credible, affordable software alternatives that have key features found in high-end tools. And they need local support to help them and their customers navigate licensing and other issues.

Helping the IT channel take advantage of this opportunity is Australian enterprise software distributor Aquion. Founded by Stephen Balicki in 2001 with a vision to bring the best software solutions to the APAC market, Aquion has for the past twenty years supported vendors and resellers entering or expanding in the Australian market by eliminating the challenges associated with managing multiple vendors, and multiple currencies. It takes care of contract management, price negotiations and FX risk on behalf of resellers, allowing vendors to sell into markets where they would otherwise struggle because of legal and FX complexities.

By combining this with expertise in sales, software licensing, subscription management, deal registration and marketing, Aquion provides end-to-end support to help resellers deliver meaningful value and grow their sales.

These partnerships are achieving impressive results. For example, Microsoft 365 migration and SharePoint and Teams management tool vendor ShareGate increased its subscription renewal from 50 percent to 75 percent after working with Aquion to develop an education campaign for its software.

Aquion is on track to deliver 26.5 percent year-on-year aggregate revenue growth for the vendors featured below, and revenues from our SMB and midmarket partner base are growing at 48 percent year-on-year.

 This success is partly due to Aquion’s agility and laser-like focus on service. "We're very proactive, and we act in lockstep with the vendor to provide the best possible customer support," says Audrey Lyon, Aquion’s head of strategic business development.

 "We operate under a push-pull philosophy, acting as the touchpoint between the vendor, the reseller, and the end-user, providing education about licensing options that add value for customers and add revenue to the sales forecast of resellers and vendors.”

Essential software for the modern office

 To help Australian small, medium & large businesses operate efficiently in a post-pandemic environment, Aquion is building its productivity, collaboration and security software portfolio.    

 Below are five of these vendor solutions resellers can buy from Aquion, and information about how they can benefit resellers and their customers.

CorelDRAW: A powerful graphics solution to solve creative problems

Many resellers likely know the name Corel™ due to the company’s 30-plus year history in the technology space. But Corel products have advanced far beyond its beginnings to include a suite of offerings that can tackle everything from graphic design to mind mapping to accessing Windows applications on Mac computers—and many of these solutions are powerful enablers of remote working.

Core products: CorelDRAW is an advanced all-in-one alternative to Adobe Creative Cloud Suite, combining illustration, layout, photo-editing, and typography tools for graphics, creative, and production professionals for a fraction of the price of competing products.

CorelDRAW’s AI and machine-learning technology is integrated across a range of tools. This allows users to do things such as resample low-resolution images to reduce or eliminate items and noise from JPEG files or apply Art Style effects to see what their work would look like in 17 different styles.

The solution’s next-generation cloud-based collaboration tools and workflow features help support remote working, allowing users to collaborate with colleagues and clients across platforms and devices in real-time. Users can approve designs and reply to or resolve feedback from one or multiple stakeholders in a single, centralized location—the design file itself.

CorelDRAW’s intuitive new project dashboard makes it easy to store, organize, and share cloud files and search reviewer comments for specific feedback. Its flexible design space also enables users to quickly move from ideation to execution using multi-page and multi-asset export tools.

Value proposition: CorelDRAW's productivity tools are designed to simplify complex workflows, allowing users to spend more time creating and less time juggling PDF exports, emails and attachments. Users don’t need to be professional graphic designers, making the software suitable for the likes of teachers, students and marketing professionals, and many other roles.

Customers can take advantage of perpetual licensing and modest annual maintenance fees, which help ensure predictable ongoing costs and avoid vendor lock-in. CorelDraw licenses are also cost-effective—a perpetual license with two years of maintenance can cost up to 66% less than an equivalent one-year subscription for alternative products.

Licensing: Customers can subscribe to Corel’s full suite of professional graphic design applications for around the cost of a single competing application, or they can choose a perpetual license to own the software outright.

Foxit: Productive PDF products

Foxit's mission is to develop innovative, market-leading PDF products and services that assist knowledge workers to maximise their productivity.

Core products: Foxit’s PDF Editor Pro software is the leading alternative to Adobe Acrobat, providing the features customers need for a fraction of the cost.

Foxit PDF Editor Pro allows users to create professional looking PDF documents quickly and easily using advanced editing capabilities – with security safeguards protecting sensitive information.

Its Organise PDF feature enables users to add, delete, or combine pages from multiple PDF files to create a new PDF document, move pages around within or between different documents in the Thumbnail panel, and delete, add, swap, flatter, crop, and extract pages.

Advanced editing features allow users to add text, images, and video to their PDF documents, and modify text, objects, format, organisation and layout. The software automatically identifies text-boxes and seamlessly reformats paragraphs in the same manner as word processing software.

Foxit also offers Enterprise Administration – the Foxit Admin Console and Update Server –  as an add-on (purchased separately), providing IT with the ability to better manage large volumes of Foxit PDF Editor Pro licenses and automate the software upgrade process.

Foxit Sign empowers organisations to accelerate their agreement workflows, offering the easiest, fastest, and most secure way to sign, send, track, and store documents on any device.

Foxit’s esignature solution provides digital oversight, identifying signees and pending stakeholders and produces timestamps for when documents are opened and signed, ensuring reliable audit trails for transactions, all organised in a centralised repository. Foxit Sign’s automation tool offers the ability to send gentle reminders to participants and create saved agreement workflows for recurring agreements for participating parties. Foxit Sign templates enables organisations to produce company-approved contracts with consistent legal language and terminology, without having to start from scratch every time. Foxit Sign also offers integration with Google Drive and Dropbox.

Value proposition: Foxit PDF Editor is easy for businesses to use, setup, and administer and is the top ranked PDF editing solution on the G2 software review site. A world-class post-sales team provides end-users with 24-hour live customer support, seven days a week, using the medium of their choice – be it phone, chat, email, or by lodging a ticket. And a chat function enables users can have their issues addressed without leaving the application.

Foxit PDF Editor also saves customers at least 30 percent compared to the price of the market leading alternative PDF editor.

Contracts facilitated via Foxit Sign are legally compliant across the US, EU, and Australia and are fully traceable, guaranteeing the most effortless and secure way to share, sign, and send documents.

Licensing: Customers can choose between one-time perpetual licenses and yearly or monthly subscriptions.

Deal Registration Policy: For opportunities of 50 or more licenses, Deal Registration qualifies partners for additional margin and locks exclusivity on the opportunity for 90 days. Two partners cannot qualify for the same opportunity so get in fast!

By registering your deal, you’ll reap the full benefits of Foxit's channel team, including support from an account executive, dedicated channel manager, and solutions engineers.

Nitro: PDF and eSignature Solution

Nitro is an Australian ASX-listed company founded with the aim of offering an affordable alternative to legacy PDF and e-signature software. Its customers make up 68 percent of the Fortune 500 and include GE, Exelon, ExxonMobil, Toyota and Continental, and JLL Australia.

 Core products:  The Nitro Productivity Platform is comprised of Nitro PDF Pro, Nitro Sign and Nitro Analytics.

The solution is designed to increase productivity across an organisation and lower the cost of ownership and offers users seamless deployment at scale across environments Its feature-rich platform provides best-in-class solutions, allowing users to get more out of the documents that drive their business.

Nitro works across every device, workflow, and touchpoint, and allows users to select the services they need.

Nitro Analytics is designed to unlock crucial insights to help organisations understand how to optimise workflows and processes to maximise productivity and ROI. Nitro Admin contains intuitive admin controls that reduce the time spent onboarding and managing users by enabling fast activation and licence allocations across operating systems. 

Advanced features of the Nitro Productivity Platform also include the ability to create, convert, edit and merge PDFs and securely sign documents, digitise, automate, and track signing workflows, audit trails, custom-branding, integrations, and SSO. Its unlimited person-to-person e-signatures are mobile ready and unblock access to teams and clients, supporting workflows and accelerating approvals anytime, anywhere.

Nitro Sign offers integration with a number of productivity platforms including Salesforce, Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Box, SharePoint, Microsoft Flow and Zapier.

Its security controls are compliant with e-signature regulations and have secured SOC2 Type 2, HIPAA, and Privacy Shield certification, as well as Single Sign-on and Two-Factor Authentication. 

Value proposition: The Nitro Productivity Platform empowers businesses to streamline their licensing subscriptions by consolidating their PDF and editing tools into a single package. For a single, affordable price per user, it includes Nitro PDF Pro and e-sign.   

For channel partners, Nitro offers industry leading margins and discounts. Nitro supports partners with everything they need to be profitable on the Nitro Partner Acceleration Program; from sales training, marketing support and technical expertise. Resellers do not need to meet minimum revenue levels to join the Nitro Partner Program.  

The vendor also makes it easy for customers to migrate from their existing vendor. Victorian construction company McConnell Dowell migrated from an incumbent PDF solution, rolling out more than 1,000 Nitro licenses, and is projected to save up to 50 percent in related costs, based on current consumption, once it has rolled out Nitro to its remaining users.

Nitro subscribers are also provided with a team of change management experts who can work around the clock to help maximise investment from pilots and deployments, through to user adoption.

Licensing: Nitro offers straightforward and flexible licensing based on the number of required users, and includes unlimited person-to-person signature requests and PDF usage. Prices and terms of use are fixed and customers will never be surprised by future charges, so they can accurately forecast their yearly expenses while empowering employees with the best tools for best business outcomes.

Deal Registration Policy: View deal registration terms here.

ShareGate: Maximise MS365 migration capabilities

ShareGate is a global Microsoft partner providing a Microsoft 365 migration and management tool for SharePoint and Teams. Its products are used by more than 13,000 businesses in more than 100 countries.

Core products: The ShareGate Productivity Suite includes two key products: ShareGate Desktop for migrating from SharePoint On-Premise to SharePoint Online, and ShareGate Apricot for Teams lifecycle management and governance.

ShareGate Desktop can clone a Modern SharePoint site, migrate Microsoft Teams between tenants, and easily administer SharePoint environments using pre-built reports on Permissions and Sites. It can also be used for ‘File Server’ migration projects to SharePoint Online.

ShareGate Apricot allows administrators to monitor Teams activity, create custom governance protocols, automatically control privacy status and external sharing at a Team level, and schedule reviews of externally shared content.

The suite promotes collaborative governance and ensures that Team members are accountable for the content they create while allowing managers to automatically identify problems, track the actions taken to achieve solutions, and course-correct as the business scales.

It allows users to reorganise and restructure SharePoint content, bulk-manage permissions, metadata, and file structures, and monitor and secure SharePoint environments using built-in and custom reports.

It also allows unlimited data migration and does not require server installation, enabling organisations to be migration-ready in two minutes, no matter the volume of data and files they need to migrate. ShareGate is also the only recommended Nintex migration partner for workflows and forms.

Value proposition: ShareGate Desktop and Apricot are bundled together in a single subscription called the ShareGate Productivity Suite.

Another key value point is the usefulness of the ShareGate Productivity Suite not only for migrations, but also to manage SharePoint and Teams environments afterwards. Most resellers buy the suite for migration projects, but they can provide much more value by presenting the suite’s additional capabilities to customers.

Check out the ShareGate Demo Centre for instructional videos on how to use Desktop & Apricot: ShareGate Demo center - Learn how to use ShareGate

Licensing: The ShareGate Productivity Suite allows customers to manage their SharePoint, Office 365 migration and Teams environment via a single 1, 2 or 3 year subscription, which includes unlimited, award-winning technical support before, during, or after migration.  For larger migrations you can purchase a multi-user license and deploy Desktop on multiple machines to increase throughput.

Deal Registration Policy: Make sure to register your deals with us before the trial or quoting stage for extra discount.  Deal Registration only applies to new customers – if a customer has been in contact with ShareGate previously, deal registration cannot apply. ShareGate reserve the right to deny Deal Registration. No minimum user count.

TechSmith: Cut video editing costs

TechSmith is the global leader of the screen recording, screen capture and video editing software market. The company’s products are used by everyone from corporate trainers and knowledge workers to IT providers and university professors. TechSmith’s customers are in 193 countries and include all Fortune 500 companies.

Core products: TechSmith's flagship products are Camtasia for screen recording and video editing, and Snagit for screen capture and recording. Snagit has been evolving since 1990 and it has been estimated the software has been used by more than 39 million people. The products are available to purchase individually or as a bundle.

Key Camtasia features include audio, webcam and screen recording of websites, software, video calls, and PowerPoint presentations. It has pre-built templates and a built-in video editing interface which supports drag and drop text, transitions, and effects. Users can also scale their videos by packaging standard templates, assets, and tools for sharing across devices, teams, and organisations.

Snagit features include pre-made image templates and layouts for creating visual documentation, tutorials, and training materials, all-in-one capture of entire desktops, regions, windows, or scrolling screens, and the ability to toggle between webcam and screen recording during a single video. Its GrabText feature allows users to copy and paste text from a screengrab or file, and its Panoramic Scrolling Capture supports both vertical and horizontal scrolling. 

Users can create video from images by talking or drawing over a series of screenshots to create quick and simple 'how-to' videos or gifs. The Screen Recorder feature lets users record themselves working through a step-by-step process or grab individual frames from a recorded video. It also supports animated gifs and annotations.

The TechSmith Capture App lets iPhone users record their phone screen with just a few taps and instantly share it with Snagit for trimming and other video editing.

Value proposition: Camtasia enables casual users to create videos without needing to invest a lot of time learning more complex tools. For this reason, it is not intended to compete with tools such as Adobe Premiere that are aimed at professional video creators.

This means teachers and others in the education sector may find Camtasia useful for creating professional learning content in the form of videos, podcasts, and tutorials. Site-wide licences also enable educators to operate the software across 500 computers in their school or association of schools. They also receive priority support, training, and upgrades for a single one-time fee.

Camtasia’s ease of use also makes it suitable for IT resellers wanting to create video content to market their products and services, and MSPs wanting to make thought-leadership, training, how-to videos, and podcasts.

TechSmith's pricing is half the price of some professional grade video creation tools. And perpetual licensing and modest annual maintenance fees means customers have predictable ongoing costs and allows them to avoid lock-in.

Licensing: TechSmith offers perpetual individual, volume, and site licensing options and corporate, education and non-profit/government pricing, in addition to upgrade pricing. Resellers can bundle Snagit with Camtasia for only an additional 15 percent per user, including maintenance.

Thank you on behalf of Aquion and our Vendors

Aquion is proudly Australian owned & managed, and we would like to thank our key vendor partners Corel, Foxit, Nitro & ShareGate for their support in creating this Partner Hub.  We would also like to thank all the resellers who have taken the time to explore the compelling solutions our vendor partners have to offer.  We are committed to helping all of our reseller partners – new and existing, achieve success by offering a broad range of channel friendly, ‘challenger’ brand alternatives, giving our reseller partners greater choice and flexibility.

Learn more by contacting Aquion: Phone: 1300 278 466 or email: vendorsales@aquion.com.au