The Paper Pushers

Two longtime players in the channel have decided to pool their collective skills to create a Web site that will be dedicated to automating the processes associated with maintaining and maximizing a solution provider's standing in a vendor's channel program. The site, called RCE.com, will offload from solution providers all the paperwork demands required by vendors to maintain one's status in the increasingly complex world of the channel.

Like most good ideas, this one is relatively simple and goes to the heart of major pain that many solution providers deal with every day: To comply with vendor demands for information and visibility into the channel, many solution providers have needed to add head count to handle all the administrative requirements.

Those requirements rankle many smaller solution provider partners. More often than anyone likes to admit, the administrative costs associated with complying with some vendor programs exceed the profit generated by the razor-thin margins associated with selling hardware.

Marie Graziano and Melissa Wolchik are two intrepid souls with extensive channel experience. Graziano runs Red Phoenix Systems in Carrollton, Texas, a firm focused on selling solutions to the local small-business market, while Wolchik has many years of experience in the distribution business.

It's their collective experience that gives them the credibility to head up Regal Channel Experts, the company they created to start this online venture. The two of them hope to work with both Hewlett-Packard and IBM to formally launch the site sometime in January.

In a world where everything needs to be measured and studied, this is clearly an idea whose time has come. And for solution providers struggling with overly complex channel programs, it may prove to be not only a welcome relief from mind-numbing drudgery, but more importantly, an incredibly valuable tool that maximizes the compensation solution providers can derive from any vendor's channel program.

Are you listening? Do you agree? I can be reached at (516) 562-7477 or via e-mail at [email protected].