Getting Smarter

For example, many solution providers servicing midmarket customers in the financial services segment might, for some unexplained reason, be buying higher-capacity storage arrays coupled with server blades. In essence, these solution providers would be leveraging the lower-cost server blades to afford higher-cost storage.

If vendors knew about this trend in realtime, then the next time a midmarket solution provider only bought a server blade, for example, the vendor could make a special storage offer right when the server blade transaction is being conducted.

Sound far-fetched?

Not if John Tonnison, vice president of e-commerce at Tech Data, has anything to say about it.

The Clearwater, Fla.-based distributor next month plans to formally roll out a new Web site that, in addition to including much better search technology, will begin tracking the purchasing behavior of solution providers. The idea behind Tech Data&s effort is to track in aggregate the specific buying behavior of different classes of solution providers.

Aside from being able to make special offers based on that information, Tech Data will be able to share that data with its vendors. Vendors have no real statistically valid way of tracking purchasing in the distribution channel because most distributors don&t have any real business intelligence capability linked to an actual CRM system.

For the industry, this should be a major technical leap forward that results in more transparency across the channel. It, in turn, should ultimately lead to the creation of more relevant bundles that increase attach rates on given transactions and also hopefully create better deals for solution providers as well.

What&s your visibility into purchasing habits? I can be reached at (516) 562-7477 or via e-mail at [email protected].