Finding The Right It Distributor For Your Reseller Business: 3 Things To Know

By Author: Shane Emerson
Total Articles: 13
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1) Dropshipping

Want to simplify managing your online business? Don't want to deal with the order fulfillment process? If yes, it is advised to choose an IT distributor that provides reliable dropshipping services.
Adopting the dropshipping business model is the easiest way to launch and manage your ecommerce store.

Let's say you start an office supplies store. Now, if you decide to Dropship office supplies, your distributor is in-charge of inventory storage as well as in fulfilling orders to the customers.

In a dropshipping business model, the distributor handles inventory management as well as packages and ships orders to the customers.
As a reseller who has adopted dropshipping, you don't have to rent a warehouse to physically handle the inventory nor spend time in packaging and shipping orders.

From inventory management to order fulfillment, the distributor is responsible for everything. This allows you to divert all your efforts on growing your business.

The dropshipping business model gives you ample time to focus on different marketing strategies so as to boost your online business.

Choosing the Right Dropshipper

Ingram Micro distributor has a range of IT products and offers excellent dropshipping services. Ingram Micro, in fact, is the largest distributor of IT products.

Ingram Micro has a strong reputation for on-time delivery and moreover allows its customers to track orders. When you choose Ingram Micro as your distributor, you don't have to keep any stock. Just accept the orders and pass the details onto Ingram Micro.

2) Offers Inventory Feed

Manual catalog upload is a time-consuming activity, particularly when the distributor is offering a large number of products.
Say, you are connected to Digitek distributor. Now to add the distributor's products into your ecommerce store, firstly you have to create a data feed file (spreadsheet file) that contains inventory information. Once the data feed file is created, you have to then upload it to your BackOffice ecommerce.

A better option is to choose a distributor with inventory feed. Digitek does offer inventory/data feed which enables you to receive product catalog quickly into your store.

Overall, when you want to load inventory data of thousands of products into your site, make sure the distributor has its own data/inventory feed. This saves a lot of time and completely eliminates the tedious task of manual catalog upload.

3) Real-Time Inventory Updates

In order to make well-informed business decisions, you need to have precise information about inventory levels in real-time.
This means whenever the reseller updates the inventory, the changes should be immediately reflected in your catalog. Without real-time inventory updates, comes the risk of overselling and underselling.
You simply cannot take the risk of having incorrect inventory levels. So ensure that the distributor comes with a real-time inventory sync tool . This will automatically sync the distributor's inventory on to your store and eliminate overselling.

On the whole, consider the aforementioned factors when choosing an IT distributor. Say you want to sell Tech Data product online. Find out whether the distributor is providing dropshipping services. Further check is there any provision regarding inventory feed and real-time stock updates.

Shane is an American writer for various digital news publications. After being in the ecommerce industry for more than 15 years, Shane has a good understanding of what it takes to make an ecommerce business successful. His articles give insights on the latest trends in the B2C and B2B ecommerce industry. His ecommerce coverage is robust and provides everything from best ecommerce platform to improving your website site. He also likes to cover newsworthy events related to business management software, customer relationship management (CRM) and Quoting software.