GTDC Supplies Performance Meter

Last month, the two organizations officially launched the long-awaited Distributor Track research service, which aggregates and analyzes sales-out data from GTDC members in North America. Overall, these distributors represent about $60 billion in product sales, the council estimated.

The research will offer GTDC members weekly and monthly gauges for assessing business performance relative to their peers. Historical data reaches back 20 months for comparison purposes.

"Without it, you're flying blind," said Tim Curran, CEO of GTDC.

Kent Foster, chairman and CEO of Ingram Micro and a GTDC co-chairman, said the Distributor Track data will help his company identify emerging markets and figure out ways to more efficiently serve different segments of its customer set. "Our industry was growing so rapidly that we didn't do a good job of keeping track of this," Foster said.

Among other things, the service tracks top-level volume for a range of hardware, software and networking categories, as well as the buying patterns of VARs, retailers and direct marketers. NPDTechworld, a unit of research firm NPD Intelect, also can drill down to determine vendor share among distributors and information specific to certain SKUs. CRN plans to publish a snapshot of this data each week.

The research firm plans to sell the data to high-tech vendors and others for an undisclosed sum, and GTDC members will receive price breaks on the research in exchange for providing their information. "We hope this will provide better visibility into the successes or challenges associated with a particular customer set," said Neal Bonner, director of commercial business development at NPDTechworld.