Tech Data Readies Next Phase Of E-Business Tools For VARs

Traditionally, Tech Data's e-commerce strategy has focused almost entirely on making transaction-enabling tools available to its resellers, allowing them to link their own managing, cataloging and purchasing systems with its larger infrastructure. While that has been a success as the growth of XML-based solutions expands "machine-to-machine" capabilities and cuts deployment time, during the past several months the distributor has been looking to expand those offerings even further, says John Tonnison, Tech Data's vice president of e-commerce.

The move comes as VARs are increasingly looking for ways to let their distributors and other partners perform more business functions for them,functions that fall beyond either their scale or the scope of their core competencies. "Our own business is becoming increasingly aware of the cost of components of doing business, and I think our customers are also becoming aware of the granular pieces of their businesses and what it costs them to do business," he says.

The first part of the new strategy, which went online earlier this summer, was a fully automated return system designed to dramatically cut the time and effort associated with returns. That way, a reseller on the phone with a customer can get a real-time answer from Tech Data's own rules-based system on whether a product is acceptable as a return. "We can dynamically, live and in real-time, give [VARs answers so they can confidently give their customer a commitment without looking like they have to ask someone else for it," Tonnison says. "It's their business, their determination and their responsibility, but at the same time, they know they're being backed by the distributor without a guessing game or the fear that they may be left out."

Other recent online initiatives include making Cisco certification courses available online to resellers, as well as an update to the TDAgency online toolkit that allows VARs to leverage online resources to research, design and customize marketing campaigns for their company promotions.

The next step of Tech Data's e-business strategy, expected to start this fall, will be a massive upgrade to the distributor's product-information catalogs, making them available for resellers to use downstream with their own customers. "Historically, product data maintained by distributors has been for a reseller's own salespeople to use to make decisions on acquiring technology," Tonnison says. "But, increasingly, product data is being used by resellers to present to customers, and it's apparent the standards for product-data richness and clarity are very different with that audience."

As part of the effort, Tech Data is working to create richer data models, including better product pictures and graphics, more comprehensive descriptions, expanded comparison capabilities and more detailed specification and configuration data. "We're in the middle of a major shift," Tonnison says. "It's about publishing things we've got that can be a cost benefit to the reseller."

"We're not trying to make money out of publishing these things," he adds. "We're trying to make the reseller successful and more competitive and, of course, one hopes along the way that we build some additional loyalty as a result, since they are using components of our infrastructure and back end."