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The Business Challenge

For the technology distributor, thin margins are the norm and sales volume is the name of the game. To gain an edge on the competition and maximize their sales opportunities, distributors must deliver outstanding levels of service to their "family" of reseller customers.

Resellers rely on distributors to provide on-demand access to product specifications, pricing and availability so they can care for their own clientele. Easy access to detailed product information is a big part of that expected level of service. Increasingly, distributors have turned to e-commerce initiatives as a channel to fulfill that need.

Unfortunately, many distributors face several key challenges delivering on this initiative for resellers and their own sales team:

  • Enormous product catalogs to convert into electronic format
  • Inconsistent product information structure in different vendor formats
  • Delivering automation for speed and ease of use
  • Consistently building and updating the e-catalogue as new products come to market
  • Streamlining the product ordering process

...and doing this all in a way that doesn't do more to create overhead cost than it does to increase sales.


CNET Channel Solution

With CNET Channel solutions for distributors, you can:

  • Become your customers' #1 destination for product information
    • Meet the demands of all of your different reseller customers with broad enough product coverage to serve all of their information needs
    • Be the first with detailed product information on newly-announced products; 70,000 newly created SKUs each month
    • Become the "ultimate research site" with efficient multi-mode search and detailed product comparisons
    • Build custom data sheets from over 3.2 million SKUs across multiple IT and consumer electronics product categories
    • Keep your site "sticky" – frequently roll out attractive new ways to present and package products
  • Maximize online sales
    • Increase dollar value of orders with efficient cross-selling, product suggestions and configurators
    • Maximize sales effectiveness with easy access to detailed product information
    • Offer electronic order submission and status/tracking information to an extended audience of VAR professionals
  • Minimize e-commerce costs
    • Eliminate most costs of managing your online catalog
    • Flexible, structured and standardized data is easy to manage, quick to deploy, and better-performing
    • Increase customer self-service; let sales and support shift focus away from routine information requests

Not only will CNET Channel's DataSource™ ensure that your catalogs have all the accurate and complete product information needed to satisfy your customers - but our flexible data will enable new ways to sell your products online.

ChannelOnline™ can help your small and medium-sized VAR customers maximize their own sales productivity and customer service levels, while reinforcing profitable business decisions. Find out why more than 3,000 VAR professionals rely on ChannelOnline to automate their complete sales cycle.

CNET Channel's Memory Selector™ takes the pain out of selling memory by making identification of compatible parts easy on consumers and profitable for you.


Resources

Follow the links below to learn more about how CNET Channel can help distributors solve your e-commerce challenges and deliver outstanding levels of service to "member" resellers.

Customers:  Partial list of distributor customers


White Papers

  • DataSource™: Content Delivery and Maintenance for Your Electronic Product Catalogs
    (December 2004)
    This paper will help CIOs and IT/eCommerce engineers in channel businesses understand the technologies that comprise the DataSource solution, how these technologies work together to provide the richest and most complete product information in the industry, and how their businesses can use DataSource to reduce operating costs and drive revenue.

  • Delivering Multi-Vendor Product Information to Facilitate Customer Purchase Decisions: Evaluating the ROI of CNET Channel DataSource™
    (January 2005)
    To demonstrate and quantify the economic benefits associated with DataSource, CNET Channel contracted Callan Consulting, an independent business modeling consulting firm, to develop a detailed return on investment (ROI) model. Callan Consulting interviewed a broad range of CNET Channel customers and gathered data from a variety of secondary sources to create the DataSource ROI model. As this white paper describes key ROI benefits, it can be read either as a stand-alone document or in conjunction with the ROI model. Please contact us if you're interested in having a CNET Channel conduct a 1:1 DataSource ROI analysis with you.

  • Communicating Trust to Your Online Customers
    (March 2005)
    Product information is the DNA of your online store or your e-commerce extranet/intranet. Without product information, no transaction could take place. How retailers/resellers support product information directly impacts their bottom-line results. Many, however, ignore the fundamentals by featuring inaccurate, incomplete, inconsistent and confusing information on their Web sites. This results in distrust of the information customers associate with your brand and ultimately impacts your bottom line. In a sales channel where consumers can find the same product at many different locations, product information can impact your bottom line significantly. This white paper explains the seven key content characteristics that build trust and provides two case studies of CNET Channel customers that earned trust from their online customers.

DataSource™ ROI Calculator

DataSource ROI Calculator DataSource™ ROI Calculator  Now you can project how DataSource will impact your environment over a three year period. The results help you determine the costs and benefits of deploying a DataSource solution.