ScanSource Books To Educate VARs On Vertical-Specific Solutions

The Solutions Source Book, which is the first of the books and available in the distributor's online resource center, seeks to educates VARs on how their solutions can play in health care, retail, manufacturing, public sector and field mobility—all verticals that ScanSource sees as strong growth areas for point-of-service and barcoding solutions.

"It's not an in-your-face sales brochure," said Mark Morgan, ScanSource's vice president of sales, in a Channelweb.com interview. "What we're trying to do is take the verticals that are showing growth and discuss solutions that stimulate thought. If you look at the electronic version of this, you have embedded video, PDFs, links to outside Web resources, and specific training and education related to these verticals. A lot of our resellers are selling into specific verticals but in some cases are avoiding adjacent markets that are also growing. If that's the case, they're missing an opportunity."

Morgan mentioned touch-screen monitors as a prime example. Touch screens thrive in retail or hospitality environments, he suggested, but VARs sometimes forget that they're seeing huge growth in health care and the public sector, too.

"Those are areas where people are writing applications that can drive the use of technology," he said.

ScanSource developed the book in-house and funded it, without a specific tie to any one vendor or vertical. Morgan said the next step for the electronic version will be expanding its community capabilities—adding more interactive features to a resource that already includes podcasts, blogs, video and other media.

With a product that hopes to make full use of Web 2.0 and digital media, why, then, is ScanSource sending out a print version of the book, too?

"It's a low-cost publication, and to kick it off, we felt like the print version was the way to go," Morgan said. "It's a way to get it in front of people, and as we talk to them, clue them into our ability to quickly produce updated electronic versions of it."

Future resource books from ScanSource will engage other verticals according to customer feedback, Morgan said, and might also include training for VARs related to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. ScanSource hasn't folded stimulus outreach into its Source Books offering thus far.

"Right now, there's still a lot of talk," Morgan said. "You hear about the funding, but if you go out and search for that, how do you find it? How do you put together a solution? I can tell you we have assigned specific people to those vertical markets, and we'll be looking to announce those programs most likely next month."