What kind of support should you expect from your software value added reseller?

When an application stops working across your organization, what do you do? Sales, marketing, finance, and business leaders are all pounding on your door, demanding a fix – and fast.

Your first instinct might be to create a support ticket with the app’s OEM, but you know from experience that response times are slow and resolutions are even slower. What if the problems permeate across multiple apps and OEMs? Can your organization really wait while you open two, three, or even five separate tickets?

If you have an existing partnership with a software value-added reseller (VAR), that “go to the OEM” mindset could be costing you precious time, money, and reputation. In addition to procurement, the right software VAR provides IT support across your software stack, delivering faster resolutions that account for every facet of your environment.

So, what should you expect when you depend on your software VAR for technical support?

Software VARs provide true multivendor technical support

According to Zylo’s 2025 SaaS Management Index, the average company uses 275 software as a service (SaaS) applications, with that number expected to grow even higher in the years to come. Each vendor comes with its own support portal, SLA definitions, and escalation paths. That’s a gargantuan number to sort through – especially with the weight of a disruption on your back.

Instead of navigating each of these on your own, you can save precious time by using your software VAR as a single point of contact and support.

No longer will you have to be on hold with three vendors at once, debating team members over which OEM has the best elevator music. One call should send your VAR into action, troubleshooting issues, validating severity, and routing cases appropriately as they work toward a resolution.

With your VAR’s scale, expertise, and partner relationships, you should address your next software issue with fewer handoffs, faster time to resolution, and preventive measures for the future.

VAR support is contextualized by your entire software stack

Being that OEM support teams specialize only in their products, they often lack context for how those products fit into your environment and interact with your other platforms. A VAR, on the other hand, can approach IT support with a holistic view of your software stack.

A software VAR typically supports multiple tools in your stack, providing valuable context for technical issues. They understand upstream and downstream dependencies, overlapping vendors, and how one change can ripple across systems.

Instead of isolated troubleshooting, you get support that accounts for how the software operates and interplays inside your organization.

When tickets need escalation, software VARs eliminate slowdowns

If your support ticket needs escalation, you’re likely facing a severe disruption that threatens your organization’s daily functions. And yet, this is where progress most often slows. Tickets bounce between tiers, technicians debate severity, and all the while, response times stretch.

A capable VAR intimately understands vendor escalation paths and knows how to swiftly and smoothly move issues forward. If your VAR cannot resolve the issue without OEM help, they’ll have the data, timelines, and telemetry needed for the OEM support team to hit the ground running.

And because your VAR will be aware of your vendor contracts, they can leverage their scale and relationships to ensure the escalation maintains the SLAs you agreed upon.

You deserve support that goes above and beyond what OEMs offer

Compared to OEM support, support from a software VAR should deliver:

• Faster issue resolution through established vendor relationships.
• Contextual expertise when problems span multiple technologies.
• A consistent escalation process across vendors.

As the VAR of choice for over 17,000 organizations, we at SHI know software is the lifeblood of your business. When issues arise, you need fast, reliable resolutions – because every second of disruption costs you productivity, morale, and money.

With SHI^® Expert Support, you have the backing of our expert engineers, armed with over 400 IT certifications to ensure they understand your architecture and can resolve issues across all major platforms. We deliver 15-minute response times and 99% SLA adherence.

When you combine that with our deep vendor relationships and real-time ticket visibility through the SHI^® One portal, it’s clear why so many organizations trust us as their software VAR.

What customers say about working with SHI

Don’t just take our word for it. As of April 2026, SHI has an Overall Rating of 4.7 out of 5 in the Software Reseller market, based on 69 reviews on Gartner Peer Insights™. That’s one of the highest customer ratings in the market.

Here’s what a few of our happy customers had to say:

From a large organization in the transportation industry: “Truly exceptional end-to-end support throughout the entire procurement workflow. Incredible presales support and expertise, great assistance in evaluating multiple vendors, and quality deployment and post-deployment services.”

From the CISO of a government agency: “Knowledgeable points of contact and very strong relationships between SHI and the vendors of the products they sell.”

From a public sector IT manager: “Our rep has always gone above and beyond to get a clear picture of our needs and offer the best package of service and support we need.”

NEXT STEPS

See for yourself why 96% of existing customers recommend our software reselling services on Gartner Peer Insights™ (as of April 2026 out of 69 ratings). Contact our licensing specialists to discover what partnering with SHI could mean for you!

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