Archive for January, 2010

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iQuote in Israel

January 29, 2010

iQuote now covers Israel. channelcentral.net is delighted to announce expansion of the iQuote service into HP’s channel in Israel, part of the MEMA region. We are operating an iQuote pilot programme and channelcentral.net looks forward to a long, healthy and successful relationship with HP’s channel there.

Any HP Distributors that would like to evaluate iQuote should contact channelcentral.net or their HP representative. We already operate pilots in UK, Ireland, Sweden, Holland, France, Belgium, Germany and Turkey.

For contact with channelcentral.net regarding iQuote, or any other isssues please use the following contact numbers:

channelcentral.net Web Site: www.channelcentral.net
channelcentral.net  Blog: www.channelcentral.net/blog
iQuote User Group on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=2081850&trk=anet_ug_hm

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Linkedin iQuote User Group

January 21, 2010

Join the iQuote User Group on LinkedIn. channelcentral.net is always committed to providing insightful and exciting information to its customers. One of the communication links the company uses is the social platform and professional networking site: LinkedIn, which allows us to provide clear and direct two way communication to all people who interested in iQuote. Within LinkedIn look for the iQuote User Group: used to inform and publish news on all things iQuote, as well as a forum for discussion on your ideas for iQuote. Features of the group include:

  • Frequent updates on iQuote
  • Discussions on iQuote development
  • iQuote technical support
  • Information points
  • Direct communication from channelcentral.net

We look forward to welcoming you to the iQuote User Group on LinkedIn, and building effective relations with our valued customers and users of iQuote.

iQuote User Group on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=2081850&trk=anet_ug_hm

For further information on iQuote and channelcentral.net

channelcentral.net Web Site: www.channelcentral.net
channelcentral.net  Blog: www.channelcentral.net/blog

Posted in iQuote, Marketing, Product Management, Quote Software | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

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iQuote Pilots in Mainland Europe

January 19, 2010

iQuote’s reach is growing. Exciting news on the iQuote front, and how it is expanding its user base among Distributors across Europe. We’ve been live for some time in the UK and Ireland; now we are operating pilots in Mainland Europe across the following countries: Sweden, Holland, Germany, Belgium, France, and Turkey.

channelcentral.net looks forward to expanding the iQuote service to other countries across Europe. We also want to build and maintain successful relationships with every iQuote user.

Posted in Channel Business, configurator, Marketing, Product Management, Quote Software, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment »

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iQuote: What’s the ROI?

January 15, 2010

iQuote offers amazing opportunities for Return on Investment (ROI). At time of writing we have just emerged from a month of snow here in the UK. That has not prevented channelcentral.net from ploughing ahead with iQuote partly due to the way that our business is structured. One of the topics that we want to discuss is how customers, in particular Distributors, can view Return on Investment for iQuote. To that end we have produced a White Paper that offers a comprehensive guide to how to calculate ROI.

Many of our customers are unlikely to wade through a White Paper so we’ll use this Blog to highlight the key areas. Happily when looking at the Investment element it is not a particularly huge number that we need to cover and calculate against:

  1. The Subscription Model means that there is no Capital Expenditure and no Internal Management Costs.
  2. The Web-Based Service means that there is NO requirement for any Servers, Desktop Applications, Huge Bandwidth.

Our Blog here (replicated to our Home Page and LinkedIn) aims to enlighten all of our customers about the wonderful world of iQuote: an eCommerce Solution that gives Sales people the ability to quickly create price/inventory/promotion-optimised and accurate quotations, with a higher number of options attached.

For further information:

channelcentral.net Web Site: www.channelcentral.net
channelcentral.net  Blog: www.channelcentral.net/blog
iQuote User Group on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=2081850&trk=anet_ug_hm

Posted in Channel Business, configurator, iQuote, Marketing, Product Management, Quote Software | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment »

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iQuote Reporting: New, Saved & Exported

January 8, 2010

Reporting is accessed from the Management View

iQuote Reporting:  New, Saved and Exported Quotes

Today we’d like to explain one of the features of the iQuote system: the iQuote Reporting function. There’s a lot of information that iQuote stores and can be used to manage the Sales pipeline and forecast. The more Sales Managers use the Reporting functions the more satisfied your organisation will be with iQuote. So to help you to understand  the information that we are providing here is an explanation of the terms we use:

New: every time a system is selected we record it. So this is always a higher amount in terms of volume of quotes. As it is not Saved we only record the event and the system unit. Often New Quotes aren’t saved as people are just using iQuote to look up an option or system attribute. This is perfectly normal behaviour especially in Distribution where verbal quotes are common. It is the truest indicator of utilisation.

Saved: if the user hits Save Quote we record it. This is stored as Quantity 1 due to the need to validate the options. So the value is understated as they may have sold 5 like systems.

Exported: user has saved and exported. The Export is the only true indicator of value of quotes as it records quantity of systems.

More information on iQuote:
The channelcentral team will do their upmost to provide Marketing information regularly on iQuote that will enhance your experience of the service. Throughout January and 2010 there will be regular updates via the blog so please come back ! For more information on iQuote do not hesitate to contact channelcentral.net via one of the following mediums:

channelcentral.net Web Site: www.channelcentral.net
channelcentral.net  Blog: www.channelcentral.net/blog
iQuote User Group on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=2081850&trk=anet_ug_hm

Posted in Channel Business, configurator, iQuote, Product Management, Quote Software | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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iQuote: Importance of Good Product Descriptions

January 6, 2010

How important are Product Descriptions in iQuote? channelcentral.net is announcing another enhancement to the iQuote system, it has been a fast paced start to 2010 and the snow is certainly not slowing us down. We now use iQuote SystemBuilder to generate new System Units. One of the benefits is that SystemBuilder produces the Product Description making them consistent and comprehensive.

Alongside this Jan 2010 has seen us review the descriptions of hundreds of options that appear in iQuote. This again makes them more consistent and comprehensive.

“So iQuote has great descriptions..so what?”

We believe that the quality of our descriptions provides benefits to all stakeholders of the system, iQuote users and ultimately the end-user. This is because we know that the descriptions we apply in iQuote are unlikely to change from Distributor,  through Reseller to the end-user. In a nutshell, the better the iQuote system the better the information received by the end-user.

Posted in Channel Business, configurator, iQuote, Marketing, Product Management, Quote Software | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment »

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Lewis White arrives at channelcentral, responsible for web, blog and social networking

January 6, 2010

The team here at channelcentral.net is very excited to introduce our newest member of staff Lewis White, responsible for online marketing and also partly responsible for looking after the maintenance of iQuote for notebooks, desktops and workstations. So he will be the one informing you of the bright and wonderful world of channelcentral.net, and what we have to offer through our unique ways of promoting channels to the end user.

Lewis is currently undertaking a degree in BA Leisure Marketing at Bournemouth University, and joins us as part of his industrial placement. In the role he will develop the online marketing of channelentral.net via the website, the blog, linkedin and twitter, ultimately building an online community that enhances the message of channelcentral.net.

On arrival into the company Lewis stated, “The opportunity afforded to myself at channelcentral is exciting, and one I wish to excel in. I look forward to developing the business, and also developing my own skills and creating relationships that are lasting and effective.”

Posted in Channel Business, Marketing, Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a Comment »

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XML Pricing for iQuote

January 4, 2010

iQuote now supports XML pricing. It’s good to start 2010 with a major enhancement to iQuote albeit one that iQuote users will hardly notice. To date with iQuote we’ve operated with a FTP feed for pricing and then dealt with margin or discounts either through the margin control function or through a discount matrix. It works OK but it’s a little manual for our customers so XML was the direction they wanted us to go in.

As of 4th Jan 2010 iQuote can now support both FTP price files and XML. We prefer XML as it enables our customers to offer iQuote out to their customers really quickly and easily. There’s more flexibility too so if margin levels differ within a portfolio iQuote will display the correct price without having to manually adjust margin levels.

We’ve worked particularly hard on performance with XML. iQuote users are used to really fast operation and XML can be a performance trade-off. So we have almost no degradation in performance and yet are offering real-time pricing.

As well as pricing we can take stock feeds over XML too. We still take a FTP feed alongside the XML feed as we can get Due Dates, Due Quantities, Package Weights and Customer Part Numbers that way.

Happy New Year from all at channelcentral.net & iQuote.

Posted in Channel Business, configurator, iQuote, Product Management, Quote Software, Web 2 | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »