High in the Austrian Alps, near the end of an international upgrade project, Karolis Aleknavičius and his colleagues went for an evening hike and talked about what would come next.
“If we are finished with the project, are we travelling to the next country or are we going back home and establishing a new business?” he remembers asking fellow freelancer Aidas Slivinskas.
“What’s next?”
They chose to go home to Lithuania and build a company. That decision became ERP Mechanics.
At first, the company focused on technical recovery work inside Dynamics environments. Aleknavičius describes the early years as concentrated on development, rescue projects, and integrations rather than full implementations.
But as Aleknavičius built his business within an ecosystem that Microsoft says is more than 500,000-strong, he also built relationships. And within those relationships, he identified pain points he could address.
Adding Lasernet to Dynamics delivery
As ERP Mechanics began delivering complete Dynamics 365 projects, customer needs expanded beyond core ERP. Document automation became one of those needs.
That led ERP Mechanics to Lasernet, an ISV born out of Formpipe that provides document automation software for Microsoft Dynamics and delivers it to customers through Partner-led implementations.
ERP Mechanics now appears in the Lasernet partner directory and describes itself as a reseller and implementation partner. In practice, Lasernet became part of the firm’s standard project stack, delivered alongside Dynamics work rather than separately.
How vendor and Partner-to-Partner relationships shape delivery
The size of the Microsoft business applications ecosystem means most sales and deliveries now happen through Partner relationships.
Recent industry reporting places the Microsoft Partner ecosystem at more than 500,000 organizations worldwide, according to Technology Record.
In investor reporting, Formpipe, the company behind the Lasernet document automation platform, says it addresses the ERP market “through a certified partner network,” and explicitly calls that network its sales and delivery channel, adding that purchases most commonly occur during Dynamics implementations or upgrades.
That detail is consequential: it places implementation Partners directly at the buying moment for adjacent software. Firms embedded in ERP projects are effectively influencing product selection, attach revenue and long-term platform decisions.
Firms operating solely as professional services providers participate only in services margins, while firms aligned with ISVs participate in both services and software economics within the same engagement.
Analyst and industry research suggest that Partner-led motions are also where growth and value concentrate. In its latest ecosystem outlook, Forrester reports that 67 per cent of organizations expect Partner-transacted revenue to grow more than 30 per cent year over year, indicating that indirect channels are projected to outpace baseline performance.
Separately, IDC research cited in Microsoft Partner materials reports that for every $1 of Microsoft revenue, services-led Partners generate $8.45 in economic value and software-led Partners generate $10.93.
Taken together, the scale of the ecosystem, vendors’ reliance on Partner delivery, and the size of these revenue multipliers tell us that as ERP firms grow, partnering with ISVs positions them in the part of the market where both transactions and value are expanding fastest.
Growth through relationships
ERP Mechanics experienced that firsthand, but Aleknavičius sees his company’s expansion as a matter of relationship growth.
“Lasernet… enabled us to establish in the US,” Aleknavičius said. “We knew the people on the Partner side and we knew the people in the market who worked with Lasernet.”
Instead of entering a new geography cold, the company entered through an existing network of Partners and customers.
He says ERP Mechanics now plans to apply the same approach with other ISVs.
“Our growth and expansion is based on our network, the people we know, the people we trust and the products we can follow and create value with,” he said. “I’m excited about what’s next.”
The phrasing echoes that earlier moment in the Alps.
“What’s next?” Aleknavičius asked years ago.
For ERP Mechanics, that question first produced a company. Later, it produced a Partner network. Most recently, it produced a new market.
