One of the most important roles The York Group performs is recruiting qualified partners, then maximizing the interest, commitment and long-term performance of that international sales partner. This is done in many ways including managing a market's perception of a technology and ensuring that the international sales channels are free from conflict.

This was perhaps never more evident than when The York Group began representing U.S.-based ASi, a company that has been rated as one of the top INC. 500 companies.

Under an agreement with PKWare, ASi ported the famous PKZip compression algorithm to virtually every major platform including MVS, VSE, VM, AS/400, UNIX, Macintosh and OS/2. In the process it also made each compression solution cross-platform compatible.

The challenges facing ASi in trying to establish international sales were two-fold: Overcoming the worldwide perception of PKZip as shareware (after all, the mainframe version sold for more than US$30,000), and creating solid sales channels that could address a specific platform while minimizing the potential for conflict with other platform specialists.

"We have a sincere appreciation for the assistance we have received from The York Group in establishing and maintaining a network of international distributors for our complete line of PKZip multi-platform products," said ASi vice-president and general manager Scott Avera. "In just our second full year of international operations, the revenues from this activity ran at more than 40% of our total sales."

In less than two years, The York Group brought more than 70 distributors and resellers into the ASi family covering virtually every market worldwide. But just as important to the company was the long-term commitment and ongoing sales performance that these partners would have.

Said Mr. Avera: "We were extremely pleased to discover that The York Group's involvement did not end after distributor contracts were signed. Rather, they have further enhanced our relationship with the resellers by lending assistance with a wide range of needs along the way."