Support.com 2007 Annual Report Download - page 23

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differing technology standards, intellectual property protections, consumer protection and data privacy standards, and other legal
considerations;
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loss of proprietary information due to piracy, misappropriation or weaker laws regarding intellectual property protection;
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longer sales cycles;
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seasonal trends unique to international markets;
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need to localize our products and services;
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dependence on local vendors, consultants and business partners;
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difficulties in staffing and managing international operations, including the difficulty in managing a geographically dispersed workforce in
compliance with diverse local laws and customs;
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potential adverse tax consequences;
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licenses, tariffs and other trade barriers;
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difficulties in maintaining effective internal control over financial reporting and compliance as a result of a geographically-dispersed
workforce and customers;
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longer collection cycles for accounts receivable; and
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the effects of external events such as terrorist acts and any related conflicts or similar events worldwide.
Our failure to establish and expand successful third-party alliances would harm our operating results.
Our consumer offerings require us to establish and maintain relationships with third parties, including retailers, who will direct consumers to us and provide
technology support services to consumers based on our technology, as well as with third parties to whom we outsource some of our service delivery operations.
Failure to establish or maintain third-party relationships in our consumer business, particularly with partners who sell our services, on acceptable terms or at all
could materially and adversely affect the success of our business. We sell to numerous consumers through each of these partners, and therefore a delay in the
acquisition or rollout of our relationship with even one of these partners could cause us to miss revenue targets. Like our sales cycle in the enterprise business, the
process of establishing a relationship with a retail partner can be complex and time consuming, and we must pass multiple levels of review and test marketing in
order to be selected. If we are unable to establish a sufficient number of new retail partners on a timely basis our sales will suffer. There is also the risk that, once
established, with these partners may take longer than we expect to produce revenue or may not produce revenue at all. One or more of our key partners may also
discontinue selling our services, offer them only on a limited basis or devote insufficient time and attention to promoting them to their customers. If any of these
key partners merge with a competitor, particularly one that offers a service competitive with ours, all of these risks could be exacerbated. Each of these risks
could reduce our sales and significantly harm our operating results.
While our consumer call center outsourcing relationships give us flexibility and greater capacity, those relationships also pose risks. We may be less able to
manage the quality of services provided by outsourced call centers as directly as we would our own employees, and outsourced services may be more costly.
We have alliances with third parties that are important to our enterprise offerings. Our existing relationships include those with hardware vendors and
managed service providers who provide outsourced support to corporate customers. If these relationships fail, we may need to devote substantially more
resources to the sales and marketing of our products and services than we would
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Source: SUPPORTSOFT INC, 10-K, March 13, 2008