Business Challenge

VARs and system integrators today face unprecedented industry and economic challenges that make it more difficult than ever before to grow and sustain a successful business:

Steady Erosion of Margins

  • Product margins are steadily decreasing
  • Unit prices keeps on dropping
  • To keep margins, for each dollar of revenues, operating expenses must decrease

Increasing Market Pace and Complexity

  • Thousands of IT and consumer electronics vendors, hundreds and thousands of products
  • More complex products with shorter life cycles
  • Produce pricing & availability changing around the clock
  • Complex and fast-changing supply landscape

Rising Customer Expectations

  • Ever-increasing demand from customers
  • Clients require instant satisfaction and top-flight service

Operational Inefficiencies

  • Difficult to boost productivity and generate more sales with the same resources
  • Pressures to reduced turnaround in processing customer RFIs and RFQs
  • Flat or lengthen sales cycles

To address all of these issues, resellers must be sure that they are able to execute consistently and efficiently across their sales, purchasing and back office operations. Given the pace of the market and the constant rollover of products, this can be a difficult challenge - especially for smaller resellers who do not have the financial resources and IT systems that their larger counterparts do.

For most resellers, selling requires hours of searching through spreadsheets, binders and Web sites for different pieces of information at each stage of the sales process. Exact customer requirements must be captured, product details collected, compliant accessories selected, product availability checked, and pricing set according to company guidelines. Once a quote is generated, buyers must consistently determine the most profitable source that can deliver the selected products within the customer's time requirements. Any breaks or delays in this cycle can mean lost deals, unprofitable transactions and disappointed customers.


The ChannelOnline Solution:

ChannelOnline™ helps VARs meet these challenges head on by delivering a turn-key solution that automates the complete sales cycle: improving customer service, sales productivity, and sourcing profitability. ChannelOnline is a comprehensive work environment that provides all of the tools and information sales professionals and buyers need at each step of the sales process. Within a single system, sales professionals can see a customer request, check purchase history, search and select relevant products, check availability, set a price and create and track a quote. All this, with out-of-the-box compatibility supported by the top U.S. distributors and suppliers, including Tech Data, Ingram Micro, SYNNEX, D&H, Bell Microproducts, HP PartnerDirect and Azerty. To ensure speed and accuracy, buyers use the same system to determine the best source to fulfill each order. ChannelOnline also helps you grow revenues by offering a robust ecommerce storesite solution that enables your end customers to self-serve and saves your sales reps valuable time so they can refocus their efforts on your higher margin accounts and acquiring new business.

With its combination of tight process integration and constantly-updated information, there is no other solution like ChannelOnline. Our solution is designed to give the small to mid-sized reseller all of the operational advantages of their larger competitors, enabling them to maximize margins, grow revenues, and increase customer satisfaction. As a secure hosted service, ChannelOnline is accessible via the Internet by any sales rep, anywhere they travel. And as an ASP, there is no easier, rapid and more cost-effective solution to integrate your business operations and vital customer, product and pricing data.


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ChannelOnline is delivered by CNET Channel, which for over six years has been supporting the electronic infrastructure of resellers worldwide. More than 2,250 VAR professionals today run their businesses on ChannelOnline, and together they represent over a $4 billion marketplace in terms of annual quotes and sales orders. Leading technology reseller consortiums like ASCII and NASBA have endorsed ChannelOnline for years, and it's been praised by many as the "#1 business solution for VARs." With ChannelOnline, you can quickly experience the tight process alignment and business productivity you need to win more business - more profitably than you ever have before.

The recently launched ChannelOnline 4.0 solution offers an even broader range of sourcing, quoting, order management and e-commerce capabilities designed to integrate and streamline every step of the sales cycle. Today, more than 2,250 VARs rely on ChannelOnline to provide a single source of information and tools for their sales professionals and buyers. Using the hosted solution, salespeople can immediately provide accurate product details, pricing and availability information on 350,000 IT and consumer electronics products. Operations and sourcing managers receive immediate visibility to daily sales activity.

ChannelOnline is unique in synchronizing dynamic employee, customer, supplier and product information into a single integrated application and providing out-of-the-box compatibility with leading U.S. distributors, suppliers, carriers and third-party service providers.

With its combination of tight process integration and constantly-updated information, there is no other solution like ChannelOnline. Our solution is designed to give the small to mid-sized reseller all of the operational advantages of their larger competitors, enabling them to maximize margins, grow revenues, and increase customer satisfaction. As a secure hosted service, ChannelOnline is accessible via the Internet by any sales rep, anywhere they travel. And as an ASP, there is no easier, rapid and more cost-effective solution to integrate your business operations and vital customer, product and pricing data.


Key ChannelOnline Functions:

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