Direct Alliance Corporation Enjoys 500% Hike in Electronic Direct Marketing Purchases and 23% Growth in Sales Agent Productivity with CNET Channel DataSource™

Direct Alliance Corporation is a business process outsourcer that provides managed services to enable manufacturers to go directly to their end consumers. Since 1993, Direct Alliance has helped customers expand markets, increase profits, and improve customer satisfaction by linking them to systems that successfully manage profitable direct and channel relationships.

Critical to staying competitive in the direct and channel market today is the ability to empower a sales team with scalable, flexible, highquality content. Sales associates need to be able to view a product and understand its features, functionality, and benefits in order to compare "product A" with "product B," and present that information to the customer. Ian Gilyeat, Senior Vice President of Marketing for Direct Alliance, recalls some difficulty with the process before the company implemented the CNET Channel solution.

“One of our clients had over 100 employees dedicated just to maintaining content, and had a product set of about 150,000 SKUs. There physically was just no way to maintain that many SKUs in a reasonable fashion. And yet, the business continued to grow and change,” he says. "Direct Alliance began the search for a robust and reliable content solution. Implementing DataSource eliminated costs and allowed the company to deploy a much richer and more scalable data set for less money.”

A Partner Who Understands: Content is Everything

Prior to their relationship with CNET Channel, Direct Alliance clients found themselves spending precious time and resources managing and maintaining enormous amounts of content. With a huge and growing product set and a tremendous churn factor within that product set, their clients needed to find a way to better manage the rising costs of maintaining such a massive amount of content. In addition, Direct Alliance was looking for a consistent and reliable database that would allow for standardized processes across multiple client solutions. For example, one of their Global 50 customers needed to have up to 35,000 different main parent products and accessories for customers to consider.

After analyzing their needs and comparing a variety of content management solutions, Direct Alliance implemented CNET Channel’s DataSource in March 2001. The solution’s efficiencies in deploying large amounts of SKUs for clients were a major determining factor in choosing DataSource. Another factor was that DataSource would provide the company’s sales team with the ability to create complete solutions for their customers, and to easily access content about other manufacturers’ products.

It’s not uncommon for a manufacturer to package third-party related products onto an offering to create a solution, but they don’t want to maintain or create the SKU, they just want to be able to sell it. The sales staff at Direct Alliance is able to apply a consistent format to the content so that the customer sees servers, laptops, desktops, and accessory third-party products all in a uniform format. With multiple divisions, this feature is crucial for large manufacturers.

A third determining factor in Direct Alliance choosing the DataSource solution was the tremendous breadth of the IT and consumer electronics product SKUs. “In many cases, the model might have been there but it was frequently blank so the attributes weren’t populated,” says Gilyeat. “The depth and the breadth of the product SKUs, in some cases incorporating over 150 detailed attributes per SKU, was really a factor in addition to the availability of product images.”

“CNET Channel has been a very, very good partner for us,” says Gilyeat. “They have been accommodating and attentive to us whenever we have challenges with our clients. Every one of our clients needs to have a content source and CNET Channel's DataSource is the solution we always recommend.”

Data That Serves Many Purposes

The information generated through DataSource is utilized both for external e-commerce, as well as for internal purposes through the company’s CRM applications. “We’re using DataSource to support public facing Web sites,” says Gilyeat. “We’re using it to support private extranets. We’re using it to support procurement from clients where we may just punch out to their hosted applications, and we’re using it for electronic direct marketing where we’re managing or creating e-mail relationship management systems. We use it for the creation of the quote process, and we use it on invoicing. We’re using it anywhere content is necessary.”

The flexibility of the data generated by DataSource suits the constant demand that Direct Alliance deals with. With DataSource, the sales staff can grab a particular image or a specific attribute of a product, allowing them to create a communications vehicle that is unique and fits what the customer wants. Some clients want a certain set of data attributes and other clients choose a different set where they can add emphasis. The ability to immediately access and utilize components of the data as necessary is crucial to meeting Direct Alliance’s goal to automate processes and create an electronic conversation.

Electronic Sales – 500% More Effective

Direct Alliance has seen huge returns on their investment in DataSource. By migrating to an HTML-based quote system and utilizing the features of the product to link customers to a Web site with images and additional specs, Direct Alliance has seen its electronic sales volume increase by 500 percent. Gone are the days of having a sales person send a quote out to a customer that is viewing the product in a text-only format and waiting for the customer to call back and buy before the sales person can complete the order. With the implementation of DataSource, Direct Alliance’s revenue per employee (among those clients that use DataSource and electronic direct marketing services) grew at 23 percent in one year. This, without any additional headcount.

In fact, the entire sales process has become more efficient because the customer can choose to buy when he or she wants, without having to call the salesperson to actually go through the process of placing an order. All that is required of the customer is clicking a “buy” button. The quote then converts into an order and, since Direct Alliance’s financial process is enabled, the company automatically checks the customer’s credit limit. The sales person gets paid on the transaction without having to do anything more to complete the order. This self-service mentality of e-commerce enablement in the procurement process extends outside the Web site to an e-mail that contains an electronic quote. “That just makes everybody a lot happier and more productive,” says Gilyeat.

The CNET Channel solution offers a "win-win" for both the sales agent and customer. The sales staff is pleased because they have an extranet solution right in front of them that lets them perform product comparisons, make comments, and give direction to the customer about making specific product purchases. The customer appreciates being able to view and compare the benefits of each solution as it’s being discussed.

About Direct Alliance Corporation

In business since 1993 with more than 700 employees, Direct Alliance has the experience and resources to expand your market, increase your profit, and improve your customer satisfaction. Our expertise combines people who understand your business and its practices along with the systems needed to successfully manage profitable direct and channel relationships. When outsourcing with Direct Alliance, you gain the benefits of a proven industry leader backed by years of development. You also gain the benefits of a fully integrated business system that enables you to expand your business and your profits without interrupting your current operations. For more information about Direct Alliance Corporation, visit www.directalliance.com