Customized Reports From CMR Provide Sales Analytics To Meet Buffalo Technology’s Unique Requirements
Company Info
Based in Austin, Texas, Buffalo Technology (USA), Inc. is a global provider of award-winning networking, memory, storage and multimedia solutions for the home and small business environments as well as system builders and integrators.
Among its many innovative products is the first combination DVD player/high-definition media streamer, which received an Editors’ Choice award from Laptop in fall 2005.
The Challenge
With four major distributors in the United States and direct sales to leading retail chains such as Best Buy™, Micro Center and Fry’s Electronics, Buffalo’s ability to get accurate, timely snapshots of POS and inventory data is critical to the success and continued growth of business.
Toward this end, Erny-Jay Mezas has used many different tools during his career in marketing and sales. But it wasn’t until he joined Buffalo Technology as Director of Sales in 2004 that he found a solution that was truly flexible enough to meet all of his department’s needs.
“It’s not enough to have raw data,” said Mezas. “You must also trust the data and be able to manipulate it to meet your day-to-day requirements.”
CMR Adds Value By Offering Customization Servies
At Buffalo Technology collecting usable data has always been a top priority. “Fortunately, we’ve always been able to work with our partners so that the files they send us are fairly uniform,” Mezas observed. “Even so, there is always some cleaning up and validation that has to take place.” For several years Buffalo Technology has relied on San Diego-based Computer Market Research, Ltd. (CMR) to transform raw POS and inventory data into actionable business intelligence. Mezas no longer has to worry about collecting, cleaning, standardizing, and processing Channel data in house. Once a month, Buffalo Technology’s Channel partners send POS data to CMR.
In a matter of hours, the data is processed using CMR’s Channel POS solution and made available in Crystal Report and OLAP cube formats. Inventory data is processed weekly in a similar manner using CMR’s Channel Inventory tool.
Mezas’ team also benefits from the ability to view detailed snapshots of the day-to-day business - such as sales revenue, results of promotional activities, inventory levels and other trends. But, his strongest kudos are given to the customization services that CMR offers.
“The most valuable benefit of CMR is its ability to customize and cater to our specific needs,” Mezas commented. “They can adapt our reports and make changes quickly. That’s definitely important to the agility of our business and something that is a very rare service in our industry.”
In addition to creating customized reports for the sales team, CMR has also designed OLAP cubes that are populated from different fields within the central database. “We have a choice,” said Mezas. “We can view a Crystal report that has been specially designed to suit a given purpose, or we can get the raw data in an Excel spreadsheet that we can format and sort on our own.”
Calculating Sales Commissions Is Now A Breeze
In the past, Buffalo Technology had to calculate sales commissions for its manufacturers’ sales representatives manually. The process of extracting the data, making the calculations and verifying their accuracy took several days. Now, using customized CMR reports, the entire process take under two hours.
Revenue is broken out by state. Within each state, the data is further sorted by product category. “It’s easy for us to see each sales rep’s territory,” Mezas said. “That ensures that we are paying appropriately, and it also helps the reps see how well they are doing and identify which product areas to spend more time on.”
CMR Partner Avenue And Reseller Profile Eliminate Paper
Buffalo Technology also uses the CMR Partner Avenue and Reseller Profile programs to administer the company’s VAR program. From a customized Web site, prospective resellers can submit an application to become a VAR. The applicant’s profile is automatically sent to Kathy Brown, the director of Buffalo Technology’s reseller program. Once a prospect has been accepted, a welcome letter and additional instructions are automatically sent to the new VAR.
“I don’t have to do anything on paper,” explained Brown. “There are no lists to keep, no Excel spreadsheets to update daily. Everything is collected for me automatically. I receive more than 100 applications per month, so this is a tremendous timesaver for me.”
In addition to automating the application process, Buffalo Technology uses Partner Avenue to track revenues from resellers. Each VAR can also use it to view its own sales goals and actual revenues.
“In addition to top level summaries, I can drill down by territory and product category with just a couple of clicks of the mouse.”
“It is a huge benefit to be able to accurately forecast what we need on the manufacturing side and communicate our expectations to our manufacturers based on current run rates and current inventory levels.”
“Channel POS saves sales reps an incredible amount of time that can be used to sell to new accounts. It tells them immediately if their revenues are on target, both for the overall customer base or down to a specific customer.”
Benefits To The Organization
- Reduced the time needed to calculate and verify sales commissions from several days to less than two hours
- Decreased administrative tasks - sales reps now have more time to build customer accounts and relationships
- Improved forecasting capabilities enable better, faster decisions
About Computer Market Research
For more than 22 years, CMR has delivered cost effective, technology-based applications and services to manufacturers to assist them in managing channel data, optimize their trade promotion investments and maximize the effectiveness of their distribution channels. CMR’s Web-based solutions accelerate and automate distributor and reseller data collection, processing, analysis and reporting. CMR’s newest clients include Buffalo Technology, D-Link, LSI Corporation, and Targus. More information is available from the CMR customer support line at
(858) 795-1021, or can be viewed at www.computermarketresearch.com.
