As much as the cloud has resulted in the availability of more innovative business approaches, the channel environment remains largely constrained by traditional thinking. This sees resellers typically locked into long-term agreements with single distributors.
But, thanks to ChannelCenter, an open, agnostic, and automated cloud-based ecosystem is now available that delivers value to all stakeholders.
“By empowering suppliers and buyers to more easily connect with one another, ChannelCenter delivers an aggregated value proposition that benefits the channel in its entirety, not just a select few,” states Guy Duncan, CEO at ChannelCenter.
“After all, the connected business expects to have access to more buying and selling opportunities not less. For this to work, our team of developers and channel experts at ChannelCenter have reimagined and redesigned the entire channel structure to fully harness the potential that the cloud provides.
“We have, in essence, taken the channel as you know it – and put it in the cloud.”
Resellers want more flexibility, choice, and control in how they operate. But more than that, they want to access automated solutions that empower them to focus on meeting their core strategic mandates instead of being caught up in the minutiae of channel agreements, back and forth quoting and stock checking.
Fundamentally, a reseller wants to get product in front of their customers. Using the high-performance computing resources and immediacy of information in the cloud means ChannelCenter can deliver an automated way of enabling the channel process and efficiency, on a transactional level.
Agnostic integration
On a technical level, this means automating the workflow around the channel sales process by enabling resellers to manage everything from quotes, orders, invoices, and payments from a single platform.
Furthermore, resellers can load their own customers and contacts into the system as well as any customised products they may have.
This customisation extends to pricing and margins as well as branding to apply their own corporate identity within the ChannelCenter platform.
“Our platform also lets resellers aggregate and bundle products from multiple distributors and other sources, centralising everything required to more effectively manage the requirement of a reseller within the channel,” adds Duncan.
“For their part, distributors can use our platform to increase their reach by gaining greater visibility for their product offerings in ChannelCenter as well as reach potential resellers not on their books.”
Being smart
But this cloud-based system delivers more than just automation.
Using existing data acquired through global channel databases and information repositories purchased by the company, ChannelCenter applies product matrix intelligence to reveal buying trends as well as cross and up-sell opportunities.
This analysis extends to identifying ways to optimise existing customer relationships, ultimately boosting sales revenue.
“Distributors can also access historical sales data to define new and targeted sales opportunities,” Duncan explains. “Resellers can compare products, features and prices and then select a solution that is best optimised to the client’s needs and then build out a quote.
“Our platform provides the tools required to capitalise on these opportunities. Overall, ChannelCenter delivers a low-cost channel management solution that removes the need for distributors to manage their own platforms and from which resellers can deliver on customer queries – instantly,” he adds.
The digital business landscape requires companies willing to embrace more innovative solutions. Using ChannelCenter, distributors and resellers can transform operations for this cloud-driven environment and provide them with more convenient and effective ways of selling products.
It is the next step in digital distribution and digital channel and end-user engagement.
For more information contact ChannelCentre, on info@channel.center or (+27) 87 943 2718.