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April 26 , 2005
BEGANTO ANNOUNCES ERA ALLIANCE, PROVIDES BENEFITS
TO MEMBER REPS AND TO THE ASSOCIATION
Beganto, Inc. today announced that it has formed an alliance with the Electronics Representatives Association to stimulate rep and manufacturer participation in the Beganto Open Network (BeON™). In recognition of ERA’s endorsement of its online sample-tracking program, Beganto will reward member reps for helping enlist their principals as paying members of the Beganto Network, with additional benefits accruing to the association for supporting the program.
All reps benefit from participation in the BeON™ program, through receiving automatic notification when an engineer in their territory asks for a sample of one of their products through Beganto’s Need-A-Sample® web site. Need-A-Sample® also provides tools to track those opportunities to the point of a design win. Reps benefit even more when the companies whose products they sell are also part of the network (which facilitates documentation of the rep’s role in supporting the product selection process, helping the manufacturer pay or split commissions appropriately). Accordingly, Beganto encourages all reps to open their component manufacturers’ doors for a Beganto presentation of its Design Winner program; but provides special motivation to ERA member reps through a commission on fees achieved through the rep’s referral. A rep must be a member of ERA to qualify for the referral commissions.
ERA’s role in the process is twofold: endorsing the program through naming Beganto a Recognized Resource, and supporting Beganto’s efforts to enroll reps in the BeON™ program. Participation in the program is free to reps, as well as to distributors and to engineers who request samples; the Beganto business model is based on fees from manufacturers, payable when a design win has been achieved.
In exchange for its cooperation, Beganto will provide its software expertise to ERA, by undertaking major upgrades of two ERA online services, its Locator and its Industry Trade Show Calendar. ERA’s biggest benefit, however, may be the membership benefit offered through the exclusive referral "perk," according to Raymond J. Hall, ERA’s Executive Vice President and CEO while the terms of the alliance were being forged.
Although BeON™ participation is free to reps, they must agree to provide information about opportunity progress. In exchange,
- They know from the get-go about opportunities
- They get auto-updates on status
- They know (and can guide) the involvement of distribution
- They can follow the opportunity beyond their own territory
These benefits are applicable to all of a member rep’s lines, as long as they are offered by a participating component manufacturer, or are stocked by a BeON™ member distributor.
In business since 2003, Beganto says that over 20,000 people have already used its program, and it has tracked over 1,200 design wins, with a market value in excess of $100,000,000! With the inking of the ERA alliance, Beganto is using the Electronic Distribution Show (May 3-5) as a launching pad for more rep sign-ups (more than 150 are already on board), as well as for the introduction of the referral program.
"Manufacturers’ representatives are key to our goal of growing the Beganto Open Network," says Sunil Grover, Beganto co-founder and CEO. "Enlisting ERA in the process jump starts us in fulfilling our vision of eventually following the progress of a component from sample request through volume shipment to its ultimate destination."
Beganto research indicates the most important sampling problem for engineers is the need to navigate multiple web sites to make their requests, followed by getting real-time feedback on sample availability and difficulty in finding product information. Using www.needasample.com takes away the hassle while it helps the engineer as well as the rep monitor pending requests.
Complete information about BeON™ , Need-A-Sample®; , and Beganto will be available May 3-5 at the Electronic Distribution Show and Conference (EDS) in Booth 4712-14, or at www.beganto.com. Printed literature is available on request from Beganto, Inc., 48521 Warm Springs Blvd., #306, Fremont CA 94539, phone 510.687.5111, fax 510.226.6188, email: info (at) beganto.com
About Beganto:
Beganto, Inc. (www.beganto.com) provides the electronics industry a sophisticated web-based system that gets industry participants needed information for selecting, sampling, sourcing, and tracking products through the supply chain. BeON™, the Beganto Open Network, welcomes engineers, buyers, distributors, and manufacturers’ representatives as members at no charge, and lets them enjoy the full features of the system. Component manufacturers become members of BeON™ through paid use of Design Winner™, which facilitates tracking component opportunities from sampling to the point of design win. The privately held company has its headquarters in Fremont, California, and offices in Seattle, India and Japan. The company can be contacted at 510.687.5111, fax 510.226.6188, email: info (at) beganto.com
Need-A-Sample® and BeON™ are trademarks of Beganto, Inc.
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