Tried And True: VARs Find Value In Solution Centers

For distributors, testing and demo centers have recently become a blossoming phenomenon.

In early spring, a customer of Relational Technology Solutions, a VAR based in Rolling Meadows, Ill., but with an office in Largo, Fla., was considering purchasing an HP blade server but wanted to see a unit in operation before signing on the dotted line. The solution provider, though, was stuck: It didn't have the equipment on hand to close the sale.

So Relational Technology account manager Kate Marcinek took the customer to the Tech Data TDSolutions Center in Clearwater, "letting them see [the server], get comfortable with it and ask questions of people who work on it every day," she says. "It shortens the sales cycle a lot because they could ask qualified questions and get qualified answers on the spot, hands-on."

Testing and demo centers combine product showcasing, training and reseller sales support. Because the centers offer broad selections of products, they're closer to end-user companies' heterogeneous environments than are vendors' own demo labs. For example, Tech Data regularly represents 120 of its 500-or-so global vendors at TDSolutions.

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While the demo centers don't replicate detailed vendor hardware-compatibility testing, they do allow VARs and their customers to try applications on base hardware setups and in a variety of configurations. This way, VARs avoid the significant expense of setting up their own centers.

"If I'm focused on just one vendor, I'm pretty convinced I'd spend north of a couple of hundred thousand dollars to cover the bases they cover--and that's even with the vendor [discount] programs," says Keith Norbie, director of the storage division at Plymouth, Minn.-based VAR Nexus Information Systems. That would be a significant investment for the $20 million company. Multiply that by a few vendors and the cost would be overwhelming. So Norbie finds himself heading to the nearby Arrow ECS facility in 30 percent to 50 percent of his deals.

But narrowly focused specialty centers can be just as useful. For example, ScanSource has an RFID lab at its Memphis, Tenn., facility. There, customers can test fixed and handheld scanners, and related hardware and software. Also, the distributor has a box conveyor for simulating real-world applications.

"We have some [customers] that come in and test, for example, a Wal-Mart-mandated solution," says Brent Busha, director of emerging technologies at ScanSource. VARs and their customers can even bring in the exact product that would ship so the solution is more than a theoretical fit.

Although offering VAR clients a hands-on experience helps close the deal, there's also a sales by-product: End customers often make additional purchases that the VAR hadn't anticipated.

"A lot of times our folks will ask some questions that will bring out a little more information," says Kevin Schoonover, director of engineering at Arrow Enterprise Storage Solutions. "Then the customer will bring something up that the reseller has no visibility into."

Yet for all the benefits of demo centers, there are also some drawbacks. Norbie notes that the flip side of extensive product choice is the allure of products that compete with what a VAR prefers to use. "If I'm trying to sell IBM, I don't want [the customer] to see EMC or Hitachi, or vice versa," he says. "Depending on how religious you are on a specific label, there's that exposure."

Further, not all vendors want to team up with distributors on demo-center initiatives. Sun Microsystems, for one, has been unwilling, so far, to work with Arrow ECS.

"It's something we visit with them [about] often, but they have their own demo centers they want to focus on," Schoonover says, although he hopes that will change at some point. In the meantime, Arrow ECS has invested in a couple of Sun servers to show Solaris compatibility, but the result isn't as demonstrative as it would be if there were a fuller set of available products.

Of course, not every VAR has a testing and demo center in its backyard. Distributors realize that, so most are implementing some sort of remote alternative using VPNs for Web-based access. ScanSource has created telephony mini-labs that it sends to solution providers rather than requiring them to show up at demo centers.

Still, virtual technology doesn't always bring value. Some customers absolutely demand to see equipment in person. At times, a VAR can get a vendor to kick in some cash, helping defray travel costs, if the potential sales justify it. Also, particular locations are far more alluring than others.

The VARs are "very creative," says Barb Miller, director of government and technical services at Tech Data. "They'll tie that [trip] to golf for the weekend or a visit to Disney."