CNET Channel Releases New Sales Cycle Automation Solution
ChannelOnline 4.0 Maximizes Sales Productivity and Customer Service Levels While Reinforcing Profitable Business Decisions

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – March 7, 2005 CNET Channel, a leading independent source of on-demand technology product information, announced today the general availability of ChannelOnline 4.0. The 4.0 release offers a broad range of new sourcing, quoting, order management and e-commerce capabilities designed to integrate and streamline every step of the sales cycle. With this comprehensive solution, small to mid-sized value added resellers (VARs) can match or exceed the customer service, operational efficiency and sophisticated sourcing of their larger competitors.

Today, more than 2,250 VAR professionals rely on ChannelOnline to provide a single source of information and tools for their sales and buying functions. Using the hosted solution, salespeople can immediately provide accurate product details, pricing and availability information on more than 350,000 IT and consumer electronics products – while operations and sourcing managers receive immediate visibility to daily sales activity.

ChannelOnline 4.0 will provide considerable new advantages to its VAR subscribers. VARs will deliver a more efficient online shopping experience to their customers with intuitive menu structure and advanced search capabilities. Subscribers will be able to implement sophisticated e-merchandising strategies – providing unique storefronts to specific customers and customer types, highlighting particular products, and bundling products and accessories to promote cross-selling. VARs will also benefit from significant improvements in operational efficiency and customer service accuracy, with significant advancements in information sharing and access for all employees. In addition, sourcing managers will benefit from improved visibility into the extended supply chain – ensuring that they have a broad array of purchasing options.

"With ChannelOnline 4.0, we believe we offer the best Web-based work environment for VARs to control and maximize margins, grow revenues and increase customer satisfaction," said Greg Mason, president of CNET Channel. "This new version offers our customers more of the powerful tools they need to successfully match or surpass the level of sales productivity and customer service provided by their much larger competitors."

"The new features in ChannelOnline 4.0 will enable my business to operate with extreme efficiency and grow sales," said Erol Mustafa, president of Safari Micro, a Tempe, AZ-based VAR that specializes in all IT solutions for the U.S. education market. "CNET Channel met our e-commerce store requirements by delivering the functionality we need to win business away from much larger resellers. We're now able to offer our customers a highly personalized service, which will enhance our ability to compete – while we focus on the work that we do best."

New Features Deliver Benefits to Both ChannelOnline Subscribers and Their Customers

Improved shopping experience for end customers

• Rapid navigation: new menu structure lists all available categories and sub-categories to enable end customers to quickly browse and find desired products
• Enhanced search: faster field level search for quick retrieval of desired product and documents
• Advanced formatting: storefront delivers a more professional, easy-to-understand quote

Targeted online sales strategies

• Targeted storefronts: deliver custom storefronts for key customers or market segments, including customer-specific catalog and pricing
• Featured products: highlight particular products on the landing page
• Solution bundles: present pre-configured bundles of products commonly sold together – providing a complete customer solution while increasing cross-selling

Improved operational efficiency

• Efficient information management: immediately convert sales orders to invoice documents; easily control document views for quotes, sales orders, invoices and purchase orders by specifying visible fields
• Detailed price management: easy import of detailed pricing data
• Business insight: run sales and purchasing reports by multiple date types, such as created date, modified date, report date, converted to order date, and converted to invoice date

Customer service accuracy

• Immediate access to quote/invoice status: assign a status to a quote (open, lost, on hold) or invoice (unpaid, paid, partial pay, past due) and run reports by status
• Reinforce information accuracy: eliminate confusion about what document is most current with pervasive revision control – which also improves the performance of the system by cutting down the number of editable and searchable documents
• Consistent customer records: easily merge customer records, combining contacts and documents

View a complete list of ChannelOnline 4.0 features.

Pricing and Availability
ChannelOnline 4.0 is priced to be financially accessible to the small or mid-sized VAR. The solution is available now at a licensing fee of $198 per seat per month for 1-5 seats and $99/seat/month for each additional seat above 5 (a seat is each unique user.) ChannelOnline is available only to customers based in the United States.

About CNET Channel
CNET Channel is a leading independent source of on-demand product information, supporting both online catalogs and traditional sales with detailed content on over 2 million technology products. More than 1,000 companies in 35 global markets including Dell, Microsoft, Best Buy, CDW, Tech Data, HP, Yahoo!, Kelkoo, Computacenter and Actebis rely on CNET Channel to power their e-commerce platforms. In addition, the company's ChannelOnline solution combines this data with sourcing, quoting, ordering and e-commerce storefront tools to automate the complete sales cycle for more than 2,250 VAR professionals. CNET Channel is a subsidiary of CNET Networks (NASDAQ: CNET) and is headquartered in San Francisco, CA. For more information on CNET Channel, visit us at www.cnetchannel.com

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CNET Channel Contact:
Scott Danish, Vice President, Global Marketing
scott.danish@cnet.com
Phone: +1-415-344-2722 [Mobile: +1-415-254-0500]