What is a Value-Added IT reseller?

Value Added Resellers or VARs are the channel in between IT manufacturers and end users. A VAR is a vendor or firm that purchases IT products from a distributor and adds value to it by providing turnkey and customized solutions to the end users. They create a complete package of customized product and services for offering to the customers.

How do they currently do business?

The value-added reselling business model is an old one, but not much has changed in their business operations. That cannot be so in today’s volatile and dynamic market. Today, despite many e-commerce options available, a very limited number of VARs are adapting to change.
According to research by Sleeknote, in 2017, 21.8% of the World’s population went online for their purchases. The customers of VARs are often technologically aware people, which makes it more likely for them to be a part of this 21.8%. VARs need to get acquainted with e-commerce to not only grow but to survive in their business.

Here are 10 reasons a value-added reseller should have an e-commerce store.

1. Get Up and Running Fast
E-commerce is growing at 23% year-over-year, and it is of utmost importance to take a business online. E-commerce opens multiple new opportunities for all value-added resellers, irrespective of their size. Running a VAR business online brings economies of time, money as well as efforts. An e-commerce Store is easier to operate than a physical store and can be run single handedly. VARs should take full advantage of this opportunity and get an Ecommerce Store for themselves as soon as possible.

2. Attract New Customers with Search Engine Visibility
Earlier consumers used to go through the yellow pages of phone books to track down local business, and businesses understood the need to have their names in these pages. Now people go to the internet. With internet searches increasing rapidly VARs can’t afford to limit themselves by not having an e-commerce store. If used correctly, Search Engine Optimization makes sure that people see your business if they are looking for a product like yours. This brings new and unaware people to the store who otherwise wouldn’t have any reach to it.

3.Helps You Retain Current Customers
There is huge competition in the current business environment. With so many other VARs competing for the same customers, you need to ensure you make your business procedures as convenient as you can for your existing customers. By providing them with an e-commerce store you make your presence nearer to them. They can ask for a quote, place an order and compare products at any hour of the day. They are less likely to shift their vendor when they have this level of convenience dealing with you. An online store will help you understand individual demands of the customers and serve them in a personalized manner.

4.Increased efficiency
An e-commerce store increases your efficiency in comparison with a traditional store. The same work that would require 10 hours and 5 people a day would now need much less time and human efforts. Your data is centralized, your site is regularly updated, and orders are received and sent to your order management system automatically. As you don’t need to take down any data manually in an e-commerce store, it reduces the chances of typos. Your defaults related to shipping and billing address also minimizes here. This leaves you enough time and bandwidth to focus on customer satisfaction and marketing.

5. Meet the Needs of the Changing Buyers’ Persona
It is the millennial world now. Businesses are shifting from traditional to online. More and more young professionals are entering the employment and business markets and they don’t prefer maintaining huge spreadsheets. They want automation of work. Online shopping makes it easier for them to shop, compare and raise queries regarding any product. They trust and rely more on online stores. To remain in the race and meet the customer’s changing demands having an e-commerce store is need of the hour.

6. Decreased Cost of Inventory Management
Dropshipping products removes the barrier of huge investment in inventory and storage for VARs. Since you are only supposed to act as a middle person in between the supplier and customer, your investment is zero. No rent, salary, payroll or overheads. Your work limits to having an online store, marketing the products of a supplier, and forwarding the orders to suppliers as and when you receive them. The supplier ships the product directly to the end customer. Your cost is only what you do for marketing and maintaining your website, all the additional costs of inventory management vanish.

7. Automation of Transactions
With the integration of enterprise resource planning (ERP) and other back-end business systems, you get maximum working efficiency for your business. A well-integrated e-commerce store seamlessly automates transactions. Purchase orders are automatically sent to the suppliers once a sale is completed on your e-commerce store. The shipping details are sent to the supplier, and the supplier then fulfils the order on your behalf. Tracking details are sent to the customers. There is no rekeying of data or duplication of orders. Automation allows you to focus on what matters the most, i.e. customer satisfaction.

8. Faster Order Fulfillment with Cloud-Based E-commerce Systems
An efficient Order Management System is highly crucial for a VAR business. If you are manually managing your orders in spreadsheets, you are losing a lot of time in tracking as well as correcting the typos of your data. An online cloud-based OMS ensures efficient fulfillment of orders along with real-time tracking and an organized database information. Customers as well as you can track the orders at any time of the day making the whole process a lot faster and reliable. With cloud-based software solutions, there is no requirement for you to engage developers on site.

9. Makes Selling Easy for Sales Representatives
Since e-commerce stores have a centralized data base, it is very easy to be operated. Sales representatives don’t need to go through huge paper work anymore to answer customer queries. They don’t even need to be at their desk for the same. They can take up customer queries on multiple devices, 24*7 and reply to them swiftly without any geographical constraints. Additionally, sales representative can market better when online by targeting different segments of the market differently.

10. Increased Sales
An e-commerce store opens new avenues for you to sell your products. They can buy from the convenience of their homes at any time of the day. You can upsell products on your e-commerce site. You can connect to new customers through social networking sites like Facebook and Instagram and target a wider audience. You can embrace personalization among different target markets. You can keep reminding your customer about their carts and offers through automated emails. Also, you can leverage user generated content. All these facilities that come along with Ecommerce can highly increase your sales if utilized properly.
VARStreet has developed an e-commerce solution specifically for IT and office supplies value-added resellers. The e-commerce platform comes with a ready aggregated product catalog of over 40 distributors in the US and Canada. The catalog gives you real time pricing and inventory. This catalog will give you an edge over other resellers.
We are in the process of introducing our e-commerce software in the UK and it will be available for VARS in the UK shortly.

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