Inventory Solution: Web-Hosted Special Pricing Authorization™ Tool For Manufacturers, Distributors, Resellers And Channel Partners Now Available From CMR
April 27, 2007 - Published on CRMMarketplace.com
CMR, one of the industry leader in Trade Promotion Management, POS and Inventory Reporting Solutions for manufacturers, distributors and their Sales Channels, has announced the release of its new CMR Special Pricing Authorization™ channel management application, now accessible as a Web-hosted service.
This new solution from CMR helps manufacturers win more competitive opportunities, increase market share and monitor the effectiveness of their pricing strategies by automating, managing, tracking and analyzing Special Pricing Requests from resellers, distributors and field representatives.
“Special Pricing Requests, authorizations and tracking are critical elements of our sales and marketing processes,” said Rick Flores, Distribution Sales Manager for LSI Corporation Milpitas, CA. “A strategic percentage of all major purchases in our distribution business involves special pricing requests. The CMR Special Pricing Request solution is a major tool used by our distribution sales organization, and the support that we get from the CMR development team is outstanding.”
Special Pricing consideration is traditionally granted to manufacturers’ most loyal and strategically important channel partners and customers who need to reduce their overall bills of materials. Special Pricing strategies are also used to meet competition, move finished inventory from warehouses and expand a vendor’s market share.
“Our goal in designing the CMR application was to fully automate a critical channel management process that has historically been slow, inefficient and unresponsive to customer needs,” explained Del Heles, president of CMR. “Vendors can now achieve easier and faster turnaround of special pricing requests to enable their distributor sales teams to better serve their customers and empower their channel partners to close more deals and produce higher revenues.”
This new service from CMR also helps manufacturers identify and solve product pricing and market education issues. Marketing management receives regular feedback from channel partners in the form of better-documented special pricing requests and justifications from sales people. If an unusual number of requests are received, this may indicate that a product is overpriced for the market or that an upgraded product is being promoted by a competitor. It may also show that more detailed product information is needed in the market or that sales people require more thorough training.
The key benefits of CMR’s Special Pricing Authorization™ Web-hosted application include:
- The entire process of special pricing requests, authorizations, claims and financial tracking is fully automated.
- All special pricing requests are submitted and administered using CMR’s Web-based tools that can be securely accessed from anywhere 24 x 7.
- Requestors fill out a user-friendly form that matches the look and feel of the vendor company’s other online resources.
- Users are prompted to enter all required information and the form is submitted only after all required fields have been completed.
- When a new claim is ready to be reviewed, processors receive an automatic alert, typically within five minutes of submission.
- Management can review, approve, decline, or counter-offer new requests in real-time, without having personnel tied up updating spreadsheets or justification documents.
- Channel partners are instantly notified when requests are approved, modified or declined.
- Easier and faster turnaround yields a more efficient overall sales and ordering process for sales staff members, channel partners and customers.
- Distributors and resellers can direct their time and effort into selling more effectively by leveraging special pricing as an effective tool to close more sales, and build more profitable partner and customer relationships.
- The vendor’s marketing management receives frequent, detailed market demand data to support or adjust product pricing strategies.
Availability and Compatibility
The Special Pricing Authorization channel management application from CMR is available for immediate deployment. This is a Web-based application that can be accessed with any Web browser - no other software needs to be installed on local computer systems.
About Computer Market Research
Computer Market Research, Ltd. (CMR™) is the industry’s leading solution provider of channel information management, consulting and software applications. For 23 years, CMR™s web-based, hosted or desktop software applications have accelerated and automated distributor and reseller data collection processing and analysis. Clients like Hitachi Data Systems™, palmOne™, Samsung™ and Symbol Technologies™, among others, who are dependent upon multi-channel strategies, rely on CMR to improve data gathering management as well as customer and partner relationship management.
CMR clients implement Channel POS™ to optimize channel efficiency, gain better insight, align partner networks, reduce time-to-volume, and speed up the sales cycle by translating raw data into business intelligence - all key factors in driving greater revenue, profit, market share, and end-customer satisfaction. Tie in CMR’s on-line Partner Avenue™ PRM application, and clients have the integration needed for timely commission reporting, price protection calculations, accurate forecasting, inventory control, special pricing requests, optimal marketing programs and funds management.
