Distributor Tech Data Canada has launched a re-design of its Web site with new business tools and functionalities, the ability for partners to customize their user interface to suit their own business needs, and increased visibility for promotions to ensure partners don’t miss out on a good deal or business opportunity.
Sukh Randhawa, vice-president of business operations for Tech Data Canada, said the redesign can be broken into two categories: general business process improvements and promotions.
“In general, it’s now a simpler, more intuitive Web site, consistent with our desire to strive for a consumer-class site,” said Randhawa. “We’re also keen about the new content we’re using from WebCollage, which provides a lot of interactive product information to the customer.”
Navigation has been enhanced with a more consumer-like interface, and the home page can be customized with the edition of widgets to make it quicker and easier to get to and complete the tasks individual partners most often perform on the Tech Data site, such as making purchases, tracking shipments or executing product searches.
While the general design improvements will improve usability and functionality for partners, Randhawa said he’s most excited about the enhancements to the Web site around promotions, which will now have more visibility and prominence.
While the “buy one, get one free” or “buy one, get a Targus bag” type of promos have always been visible, Randhawa said in the past it was a time-consuming challenge for partners to get information on bid pricing promotions, where a specific customer has negotiated or qualified for special pricing on certain products. Usually, this information was provided to partners on request by calling the distributor or vendor, or they’d need to search for it deep within a vendor Web site.
On the new Web site, Tech Data Canada is making special bid pricing information available up-front.
“Now if you’re reseller XYZ and you’ve qualified for a special price on an HP notebook, for example, you can go to our Web site and be presented with that special price automatically through a Promotion Search tool,” said Randhawa. “You’ll no longer have to go searching for it on HP’s Web site.”
Randhawa said most of the major vendors are now set-up on the program, which Tech Data hopes will give an advantage around efficiency and time-to-quote to their partners.
“We think this will be a significant enhancement for our partners,” said Randhawa.
Follow Jeff Jedras on Twitter: @JeffJedrasCDN.