Success Stories

Enterprise Direct Jumpstarts Business with ChannelOnline™; $0 to $10MM in First Year's Sales; $35MM in Sight for '07

Enterprise Direct is based in Mesa, Arizona and boasts a marquee list of customers, including FOX Sports, MGM Grand Hotels, ING, US Airways, and Starwood Hotels. In little more than a year since its founding, the company has distinguished itself with its responsiveness, flexibility, and depth of products to simplify the purchasing process. Most of all, Enterprise Direct prides itself on delivering solutions that meet its customers' individual business requirements.

But making this pledge and actually delivering on it are two very different things, as founders Kevin Angileri and Joe Monahan knew from years of experience at other leading enterprise solutions providers. From the beginning, they were aware that the back-end systems they used to support the quoting, ordering, and invoicing process were going to make or break their success.

Delivering This Growing Business More Bang for Their Buck

"Our approach is to partner with our customer's IT staff to research and source their software, hardware, and services needs," says Joe Monahan, now chief operating officer of Enterprise Direct. "For the first month or two, we used a spreadsheet to put together quotes, and it was obvious that wasn't going to help us execute. It was too time-consuming and tedious-and wouldn't scale for the type of volume we expected to do."

Monahan and Angileri quickly realized the need for a true sales automation solution to support the company's sales force. Says Monahan, "Coming from this industry we were used to having back-end systems that had a lot of functionality, and trying to start up a business on our own without those capabilities made it very difficult. We realized that we needed a system to help us meet the high level of expectations of our large enterprise customers."

Setting out with a list of evaluation criteria, including consolidated invoicing, standard lists, customized landing pages, tracking capabilities, and enterprise data interchange (EDI) links, Monahan and Angileri looked at a wide range of sales automation tools and vendors, from well-known vendors to small start-ups. "In the end," says Monahan, "CNET Channel's ChannelOnline solution was the obvious choice, both in terms of functionality and bang for the buck. As a new company, we are price-sensitive, and ChannelOnline not only covered all the bases we were looking to cover, but also it was the most cost-efficient solution on the market."

Once the evaluation and selection process was complete, implementing ChannelOnline was easy. Recalls Monahan, "We reached out to an experienced programmer recommended by CNET Channel. He knew exactly how to integrate it into our systems and was up and running in a timely fashion."

Faster Quoting Helps Sales Go from $0 to $10MM in One Year; $35MM in Sight for '07

Today, ChannelOnline is at the core of Enterprise Direct's daily operations, helping the company meet its aggressive revenue goals. "We now have about a dozen sales reps that use it to quote as well as place orders. Plus, our customers can go to our website, conduct product searches, and writeup their own purchase orders with ChannelOnline," notes Monahan. "Because it's so easy to quote and actually place orders with ChannelOnline, our salespeople can make more outbound sales calls. Instead of taking an hour to do a quote the old way, they can write up a quote within five minutes, which helps bring in more revenue. In fact, I'm pleased to report we're bringing on another five salespeople this month to handle increased demand."

In addition to speedy quoting, Enterprise Direct credits ChannelOnline's tracking capabilities with supporting the company's tremendous growth. "At the end of a business day, we can see how many quotes have been written up, what's the largest quote as far as sales or gross profit, and which sales reps are doing the most business," says Angileri, president of Enterprise Direct. "And because we're able to track sales by month and run reports, we can see which customers are trending up and which are trending down, helping us to better target our sales efforts."

So What's the Bottom Line?

Asserts Angileri, "CNET Channel has helped Enterprise Direct become one of the fastest-growing companies in Arizona. ChannelOnline has made a significant impact on reaching a $10 million sales run-rate, and we'll continue using it to help reach our goal of $35 million next year. I would say we're going to be one of the fastest-growing and best places to work in Arizona next year."

About Enterprise Direct

Enterprise Direct LLC is a provider of IT solutions. They confidently deliver solutions based on your individual business needs, by sourcing brandname products and complete service offerings. Their knowledgeable staff focuses on your companies IT objectives - providing an additional layer to your IT staff, researching and sourcing your requirements for software, hardware and services. They are committed to your success! In addition to their responsiveness, flexibility and depth of products to simplify the IT purchasing process, they automatically match their product and service recommendations to fit your business needs. This also allows them to fit your business budget and long term goals. They strive to maximize your purchasing power! For more information on Enterprise Direct, call them at 480-422-2800 or visit their website at http://www.ediprocurement.com