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The market for selling technology products and consulting services to middle-market manufacturers is as abundant as Mike Meyers' chest hair in the latest Austin Powers movie, but some observers of this niche industry doubt that many practitioners will capitalize on it.
Major middle-major accounting software vendors -- Great Plains, Sage, SBT, Solomon and Epicor - are rapidly adding manufacturing capabilities to their core accounting technologies. And they are looking to their reseller channels, whose makeup is often as much as 30 percent CPAs, for help in reaching that market.
The move is both fueling and being fueled by middle-market manufacturers' expanding technology appetite. "Five years ago, a manufacturer had to be $20 million a year to automate, now the $5-million-a-year companies are automating and doing it rapidly with the right partners," said Jim Kent of the Kent Group, an Andover-based reseller of Macola, an established manufacturing software specialist.
Sensing the competition, Macola over the past year has gotten much more aggressive in its marketing. It has rolled out several new initiatives for its resellers and, in tandem with IBM, launched a software-hardware leasing program last month.
Among the accounting vendors most bullish about CPAs' ability to sell products and services to middle-market manufacturers is SBT Accounting Systems, which in June entered into an exclusive marketing relationship with manufacturing software vendor Lahey Financial Systems.
"There's a huge opportunity for CPAs to work with manufacturers who want their manufacturing and accounting systems to work together," said David Lahey, president of Lahey Financial...