EGIS UK eProcurement Blog

Synaxon UK, the UK’s leading grouping of independent IT dealers and is all about creating a community. And we’re showing this by introducing our own micro blogging app to our premier partners!

What is Micro Blogging??

Simply put it’s Twitter but for closed networks. We’ve all heard of the outstanding success that twitter has had on countless number of businesses but in my experience it’s great for telling people outside of your organisation what’s going on and putting information on there that you want the press and the whole world to see but what about the items that you want to ask a captive audience? Other IT dealers? Other like minded people? People that are going through the same struggles / experiences as yourself? This is what the idea behind this technology is.

When I look at Synaxon UK’s twitter, I can see CRN, Intel, Mac, Sage, my mate in Oz, dealers from the states that I’ve accidently allowed to join me, basically a whole host of items I’m never going to read as they’re more than likely little use to me and our business. This is what we are trying to overcome with this network.

We use it internally here every day, as you may know our parent company over in Germany have roughly 190 staff and we use it as a tool to keep up to date with what’s going on in the various departments, so they know what we’re up to over here in the UK and we can know what the marketing dept are doing over there etc.

This all sounds great, why should we use it though?

 Well, we want to keep in contact with you, we don’t want to keep annoying you with emails so this is a nice alternative. You want to know what deals we’ve got going with Distributors on a daily basis? This is great for this! You want to ask a question to the community, your fellow upgraded members? This is perfect! You have a great deal yourself or you want to combine your spend with other dealers to get your prices down, use this!! Imagine … you want to order 5 brother toners and the distributor is charging £70 you say, well what if I got together an order for 30? Say they came back with £68 each, you can put a message to the community, hopefully other dealers jump on the order with you hit the 30, you save £10 all by just posting a message to the community. Lets say you have an unfortunate encounter with fraud or a near miss… Let the community know immediately, post a message! Everyone will be informed immediately. Got an issue with a router / customer that has a strange request post, feedback on EGIS / Synaxon systems … post it in real time on the app! It takes 2 seconds and is a real business benefit. You can even use it in your own business and it’s completely free of charge.

OK, it sounds great, how do I use it?

I’m going to be sending email invitations out to join our community, all you have to do with this is just follow the steps in the email that will come from the provider. It’s really simple. You can then keep up to date by either logging onto the website, download the desktop app, iPhone App, blackberry or Android it’s safe to say all bases are covered.

Other things to note:

This is only available for Synaxon Premier Partners so it’s only for our larger members that are fully engaged with us, yet another benefit that we are bringing to you.

All of the Staff here at Synaxon are on the platform so if you have any questions / issues etc then it’s another platform for you to communicate with us and our partners.

If you have any questions then please contact myself or your account manager

Leading IT and office products dealer group, Synaxon UK, has added VIP Computers,  one of the  UK’s leading independent distributors of computer components and peripherals, to its line-up of distributor partners. With immediate effect, Synaxon members will have access to real-time pricing and availability data, and be able to place orders for the full range of products stocked by VIP from leading vendors such as AMD, ASUS, Intel, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Seagate, WD, Palit, Thermaltake, Antec and many others, through Synaxon’s EGIS  information and procurement platform.

The agreement further enhances the appeal of Synaxon membership and the value of the EGIS platform, which is rapidly becoming an indispensible tool for resellers looking to ensure that they deliver the very best services, choice and value to their customers. For VIP it provides improved visibility and easier access to its stock for Synaxon’s   654 dealer partners  . Commenting on the agreement, Jatti Sahni, Chairman of VIP Computer Centre, states: “VIP is delighted to be entering this agreement with Synaxon.

With its progressive business model and positive approach to driving growth, Synaxon is breaking new ground amongst dealer groups in the UK market.

We look forward to developing a strong partnership that will bring very significant benefits to the many Synaxon reseller partners who, we are certain, will want to take full advantage of the tremendous range of products and services that VIP offers.”

Christopher Connell, Sales Director of VIP, adds: “This agreement will deliver some really good additional benefits for resellers who want to make the best use of the VIP value proposition. With EGIS, Synaxon is providing a system that is quick, easy and convenient for resellers to use. For our existing customers, it provides an additional and convenient resource, and it gives those Synaxon members that don’t know us quite as well the opportunity to find out more about the rich variety of solutions and value added services that VIP can offer to their business.”

The addition of VIP brings the number of official Synaxon channel suppliers to 27 with 19 IT distributors supplying Synaxon discounted price and availability data into EGIS. Derek Jones, Managing Director of Synaxon UK, says that usage of the EGIS platform is growing fast with 419 registered EGIS users, for many Synaxon members, EGIS is becoming an indispensable every-day business tool.

The number of orders being placed with our distributor partners through EGIS has increased significantly. The more you use it, the more you like it and the more value it delivers to your business – and the more distributors who sign-up the more valuable it becomes, so the addition of a major distributor like VIP to our line-up of partners, is very significant indeed and we’re delighted to welcome them to our UK network.

EGIS is a comprehensive stock locator and procurement tool, through which resellers can access real-time information on product availability data and personalised business account pricing. They can place their orders directly with their chosen distributor, taking advantage of their own personalised pricing – or the discounted price available to Synaxon members, if it is better – without the need to log-out of EGIS. 

Where resellers have access to ’special bid’ or ‘vendor level’ data, this is also available through the EGIS on-line price check. The system is fully integrated with the systems of Synaxon’s partner distributors and designed to ensure individual businesses can see and take advantage of any of their own special terms and pricing that they may have negotiated with distributors.

Jones says that the level of business being placed through EGIS now is up by more than 300 percent on a year ago. Once registered on EGIS, resellers have full access to the inventory and availability data, exclusive pricing and discounted trading terms from Synaxon’s growing roster UK distribution partners.

About Synaxon Synaxon is Europe’s largest grouping of independent IT resellers and system houses. It provides a range of services that enable resellers to enhance their marketing and build a strong presence in their chosen market and take full advantage of the extensive stock-holding and supply-chain capabilities of distributor and vendor partners. Synaxon partners have exclusive access to the unique EGIS (Enterprise Global Information System) on-line purchasing and information platform, through which they are able to locate, check availability and order products from Synaxon supplier partners. In addition, Synaxon provides a range of pro-active marketing services which reseller members can use to drive sales activity. Synaxon is already well-established in Germany, where it has nearly 3000 partners that generate around €3 billion of gross external sales annually, representing 15 per cent of the German market. Through EGIS, these member partners have access to more than 200,000 products from over 200 distributors. Synaxon UK was established in September 2008 to recruit reseller members and supplier partners with a view to building a network of mutually-beneficial relationships that will enable resellers to drive higher levels of more profitable business and maximise the efficiency of product availability, and enable vendor and distributor partners to ensure that all Synaxon members have full access to their current stock and promotions. For more information about Synaxon contact: Derek Jones, Managing Director, Synaxon UK Tel: 0844 481 5844 Mobile: 07920 114844 Email: derek.jones@synaxon.co.uk
About VIP Computer Centre Limited VIP Computers is the UK’s largest independent distributor of components, peripherals and consumer products.  VIP concentrates on supplying the channel and partnering with its customers & vendors for mutual success.  VIP provides a wide portfolio of products and has a state of the art logistics and online ordering facilities.  VIP is an industry respected and award winning pan-European distributor based in UK, with offices in Holland, Spain and Taiwan.  Group turnover was in excess of £160m for the year ending June 2009 and VIP was ranked for the third consecutive year in The Sunday Times Top Track 250. Editorial Contact: Sarah Knowles, Marketing Executive VIP Computer Centre Limited, VIP House, 4 Hardwick Grange, Woolston, Warrington, Cheshire, WA1 4RF Tel +44 (0)871 622 7588 Email: sarah.knowles@vip-computers.co.uk

We’re happy to announce that we have added yet another Distributor to the EGIS platform, Power Inspired.

Helping you BUY BETTER, combine this with the EGIS WebStore we are offering and the iTrends publication we produce for our members SELL MORE and with the DataPack and EBC offerings all linked together we can REDUCE COSTS of your infrastructure.

Now with Power Inspired, another fully integrated distributor, we can help further generate benefits for your organisation.

“Choosing the correct power protection solution can be a confusing task. There’s a myriad of different models, technologies, manufacturers and prices that make it confusing to cut through the facts and tell you what power protection solution is suitable for your application.

Here at Power Inspired we give you no-nonsense advice, and access to a product range as good as any in the industry.“

We are now offering guided tours through EGIS to help you in using our system to benefit as much as possible from our powerful e-procurement platform. If you want to have a look, please go to http://www.egis-online.co.uk/?guidedtour.

As previously published SYNAXON is already conducting a series of weekly webinars for our partners to get more information on how to handle the EGIS system using product search, shopping cart and order handling.

We are now happy to announce that a guided tour through EGIS is now available at http://www.egis-online.co.uk/?guidedtour. Within 6 short videos we provide you with an introduction into all main uses cases, for example how to log in into the system and how to change your password:

You are also able to find us on Youtube, just search for “EGIS UK” or “SYNAXON UK”.

For more information about the weekly webinars, please have a look at our SYNAXON Open Company Wiki.

Vorsprung durch Technik,
“Advancement through technology,” that’s our philosophy. So, how can this help you or how can you help Synaxon with this?

As you should be aware we have developed the EGIS platform, within this platform there is huge amount of data and all of this data can be made available to you in your ERP systems

As you can see from the image above we take all of the data from the leading distributors in the UK, we then clean, match it to Cnet rich content and create a unique identifier for each and every unique part.

All of this information is then available in our service called the DataPack. The Data Pack is basically a collection of CSV files with all of this information in. We also have a service called Data Pack Plus which is basically an interface to the Data Pack but you can completely customise it to your requirements, what fields, in what order, how you want it either email or FTP etc.

All of this data can be pulled into the ERP system whether it’s Sage, QuoteWerks, Navision etc etc

Once you have the data in the back end solution you then have a very powerful system as you have all of the data from our distributors with stock, price and cnet technical information however, this isn’t where we stop.

We also have our EGIS Backoffice Connector (EBC) this is our XML platform that enables you to link your systems directly to the distributors back end systems.

The EBC will enable you at the click of a button to get live price and stock checks personalised to your account at the distributors seamlessly as though you are on the distributors website, all from your own ERP system. Take this a step further and you can then place the order on the distributor all from your back office platform. No more going into multiple systems or websites, complete all this from your own internal system. You can also receive invoice details, tracking info, shipping info order status all into your internal systems.

This is where we need help, the systems we’ve developer are done by our German Parent company, we need our UK partners help to integrate this into the ERP systems that our members use. What’s in it for you? Firstly you’ll have free access to the Data Pack / Data Pack Plus and EBC. If you successfully implement the solution we have a membership base of nearly 600 UK IT dealers and growing all the time and we’re extremely confident that we will be able to resell your services to our other members and help grow and develop our community, this really could be a very exciting opportunity for both you and us if you have the expertise.

If you are interested in this opportunity please give me, Phil Meacham a call on 01925 856169 or email me at Phil.Meacham@synaxon.co.uk.

SYNAXON is happy to announce that we have further enhanced your benefits of being one of more than 568 partners. As previously communicated we are always strivin to make your life easier, now with the integration of the C-Net full UK content catalogue product coverage with images and specifications is now twice as high as it was previously:

More than 92.000 active products out of our product database now contain C-Net product information and product images. This information is provided to you within our DataPack and DataPack Plus services. The EGIS WebStore even provides you with an out of the box solution to generate business and income almost immediatly by having an easy to use step by step guide to import all of the products for you.

If you are intrested in one of our services please have a look at the SOC UK Wiki or feel free to contact us directly on 0845 481 5844.

Dear Partner,

due to technical upgrades, all EGIS Services will be out of service until 14:30 today.

Please try again later. We apologize for any inconveniencies caused.

Kind regards,

Your EGIS Team

As previously published Synaxon are very proud to announce that we are working with the office stationers Black Dog, we are now able to announce that we have integrated their stock feed into our EGIS platform so that you, our members, can search, compare and order their products all from one location, the EGIS platform.

We see this as an exciting opportunity for you our members as we’re opening up the door to enable you to sell across channels far easier and widen your potential customer base, whether it be from IT into office products or Office products into IT the possibilities are increasing all the time as a Synaxon member so please continue supporting us as we are supporting you.

As we have communicated previously here at Synaxon we’re always striving to make your life easier and enhance our service offerings to you. We’ve now done this by improving the already excellent DataPack Plus Solution. We’ve now added more export templates which will easily allow you to import all of the information from our partner distributors to your shop solutions. You can now easily export and import into xtcommerce 4 Veyton and Magento. We’ve also cross referenced our products with ICEcat open along side cnet content giving you access to over 42,000 content matched products and over 220,000 active products.

We’ve also added accessories to our product database so you can easily see related products which again will improve your store or back end solutions.

The DataPack Plus is Synaxon’s tool that enables our resellers to receive all of the information held in EGIS in to a customisable format so that they can import the data into their back office solution or your custom WebStore solution.

You can easily, using our clear and easy interface configure a csv import to meet your needs. You receive access to our highly structured product data and all partner distributor information.

We’re happy to announce that we have added yet another Distributor to the EGIS platform, Compudis A/S.

By using the newly enhance product search you can now compare products from more and more distributors all in one place and with prices that are live and relative to your personal account prices. Helping you BUY BETTER, combine this with the EGIS WebStore we are offering and the iTrends publication we produce for our members SELL MORE and with the DataPack and EBC offerings all linked together we can REDUCE COSTS of your infrastructure.

Now with Compudis A/S, another fully integrated distributor, we can help further generate benefits for your organisation.

“Compudis A/S is a worldwide IT distributor located in Denmark. Compudis is in the market to fulfill the growing need for specialized suppliers offering personalized service, fair and competitive pricing, fast and reliable delivery and access to hard to find and obsolete products.”

We are conducting a series of weekly webinars to help train you in using EGIS to benefit as much as possible from our powerful e-procurement platform. If you want to join, please book a webinar at http://www.egis-online.co.uk/?webinar.