Scansource Rewards Vertical Innovation

The Greenville, S.C.-based distributor recently awarded 10 winners $1,000 each in its Solution City contest for their innovation in select industries.

"One of our goals when we launched the Solution City Web site last year was to showcase as many good vertical solutions as we could find," said Bobby McLain, vice president of marketing at ScanSource.

Categories included health care, food, education, retail, field mobile, manufacturing, hospitality, financial, distribution and government. The winners were selected by CRN Editor in Chief Michael Vizard and VARBusiness Editorial Director/CMP Media Vice President Robert DeMarzo.

The high quality of the winning solutions may lead ScanSource to create future contests, McLain said. "We try to leverage the creativity of what solution providers are using to open a whole new world of opportunity. You can take a fairly standard hardware and software solution and turn it into a very creative, innovative solution to solve a business problem," McLain said.

There are now about 200 solutions on the Solution City Web site. "It's really beneficial for new sales reps in the business, or someone that wants to start targeting a new vertical," said Stan Weaver, president of Southern Graphics and Systems, a Memphis, Tenn.-based solution provider. Its winning solution in the health-care category was its first customer in that vertical market, Weaver said.

Southern Graphics and Systems developed a custom application for Symbol Pocket PC terminals and Datamax thermal printers that eliminates keying mistakes during pharmaceutical Phase 1 clinical trial processes, according to Weaver.

Solution City is more than a contest, said Ben Wardlaw, vice president of sales at Voice4net, a Lewisville, Texas, solution provider that won in the government category. "It's not about the money. It's about showing what you can do and learning," he said.

Voice4net developed a solution for county governments to eliminate the process of manually tracking random drug testing schedules and notifications for probationers, and to automate the tracking of community service hours and court fee payment processing through an interactive voice response system with biometrics voice authentication. "In that county where we won the solution, we're now in 12 departments. Each department requires a little bit of customization, but within days now we can create the solution based on our core competency," Wardlaw said.

Such stories are music to McLain's ears. "If we can create turnkey solutions, [solution providers] are more likely to consider getting into a new market, or another vertical area as opposed to just talking about hardware or software to a client," he said.