Tech Data this week announced it has extended the capabilities of a portal the distributor created in collaboration with Cisco that automates the entire purchasing process for partners.
Announced at the Tech Data Partner Summit conference, the Cisco 1Source Portal leverages application programming interfaces (APIs) to provide partners with a self-service portal through which they can order and pay for Cisco hardware and software without ever having to directly engage Tech Data personnel, says Nicko Roussos, director of the Cisco Solutions Group at Tech Data.
Now it’s only a matter of time before Tech Data extends those capabilities out to rest of its portfolio of vendors, says Roussos.
“We’re enabling complete automation of the quote to cash process,” says Roussos.
Tech Data is able to accomplish that goal because guidelines for special pricing quotes have already been established with Cisco, says Roussos. Those discount levels are accounted for in the pricing that partners see depending on volume and the type of product being ordered so there is no need to negotiate, says Roussos.
That capability is especially critical at the end of every quarter because customers and partners alike are now waiting to the last minute to order products and services in the hopes of getting the biggest discounts, adds Roussos. Tech Data currently makes sure its staff is available to work overtime to manually process all those orders at the end of the quarter, notes Roussos.
Over time, Tech Data envisions reallocating the resources it currently employs to manually process orders to providing partners with additional white-glove services, adds Roussos.
At this juncture, it’s now just a matter of time before the purchasing process across the channel becomes highly automated. Many of those purchase will be directly managed via the enterprise resource planning (ERP) and professional services automation (PSA) applications partners currently rely on to manage their business. Over time, it will also become easier for partners to also surface pricing trends over any given quarter.
Tech Data is betting that by eliminating all the friction in the purchasing process more partners will shift business in its direction. End customers these days quickly tire of waiting for solution providers to get approvals for special pricing when it many cases they can order direct online. By automating the purchase process across the entire channel, distributors will soon be able to provide an online partner experience that eliminates all the transactional overhead that makes purchasing within the channel a bigger pain than anyone involved really wants or needs.
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