HP Defogging Product Supply Chain For Partners, Distributors

HP on Tuesday unveiled iQuote, a system developed in partnership with U.K.-based Channelcentral.net that delivers price quotes for products that takes into account factors such as regional availability, special promotions, incentives and SKU updates. Channelcentral.net manages the iQuote tool, which covers quotes for HP PCs, printers, servers, storage, networking and software, as well as ISV products.

HP distributors pay a subscription fee to Channelcentral.net which permits them to provide iQuotes to their sales teams and channel partners to grease the skids on transactions. Previously, partners had to deal with enterprise configuration tools made for complex solutions as opposed to transactional quotations.

Chuck Smith, vice president of business development for industry standard servers at HP, says this was especially problematic for SMB VARs that were looking for a quote for a couple of servers. With iQuote, VARs can quickly figure out availability of products from distribution and get a clear picture of pricing, according to Smith.

"Having a tool that helps facilitate the transaction online is really helpful to move the quote," Smith said. "It also allows us to help influence what distributors are selling to VARs."

There are other tools on the market that provide this sort of functionality, but Smith said iQuote's core benefit is consolidating pertinent sales information into a central location, which obviates the need to click through a bunch of screens. But convenience is just one aspect of what iQuote brings to partners; Smith said the back-end supply chain visibility it provides is equally as important.

Synnex is HP's initial distributor partner for iQuote, but Smith said HP is working with all of its U.S. distributors to implement the tool.

"Distributors have the heavy lifting to get that working on their end and they can greatly influence the information that's presented to the VAR," Smith said. Allowing VARs to access this information can help them close deals more quickly, particular when they're in the field at a customer's location, he added.