Press Releases

August 25, 2006

BEGANTO’S GLOBAL TRACKER™ FOLLOWS COMPONENT SHIPMENTS TO TOP
FOUR CEMS IN FIRST MONTH. GETS RESULTS IN CHINA, FINLAND
POLAND, MEXICO AND MORE

Silicon Valley company confounds the skeptics as it tracks orders into Flextronics, Celestica, Solectron and Jabil, helps component vendors assure appropriate channel compensation

Beganto, the Silicon Valley on-line solutions provider that covers the design chain from search to sample to sourcing and design win has successfully gone live with its semi- final stage application– Global Tracker™ Lite.    

In its first “live” month, the new Global Tracker™ module has tracked 125 projects, with a sales volume over $10 million, into production locations in 17 countries (see box) besides the U.S. and Canada, and into ALL of the major CEM operations – Celestica, Flextronics, Jabil and Solectron. 

Beganto has now closed the loop, offering the only start-to-finish demand creation and tracking system for the electronics industry. Information now supplied by OEMs to participating component suppliers includes identification of the program manager, purchase location, manufacturing location (including CEM name and location), and manufacturing schedule.  In situations where design has been outsourced, the CEM basically functions like an OEM, so the CEM engineer uses the Beganto tools like Need-A-Sample, NeedaQuote, etc.  

The cross-functional, collaborative team is essentially built by invitation from the sponsoring component supplier, and includes inputs from the field sales rep and distributor, as well as from the OEM and the CEM.  OEMs have been happy to supply information, because the system helps them manage and track their projects that go to contract manufacturers.

Component manufacturers already benefiting from being able to quantify the results of their demand creation efforts – and to compensate their channel partners appropriately – include Hirose, Torex, JAE, Catalyst, ALPS, Fox Electronics, NJR and Optek, among others.  The new module provides the framework for connecting the design win to volume production, a challenge the supply chain has been discussing but not surmounting – until now.

One satisfied user of the Beganto system is Torex USA.  COO Kenji Tanaka says that the  U.S. operation currently has over 200 projects going overseas for manufacture, and expects the Beganto system to connect just about everyone in the supply chain, from the design stage to the actual harvest.  “We’re using the Beganto system to track these shipments, primarily into CEM facilities, more efficiently and cost-effectively than can the one full-time dedicated person who has been single-handedly trying to manage the tracking,” Tanaka adds.   Torex also will be utilizing the Beganto application to track Torex parts from reference designs into the companies that will use its IC chip sets.

Another enthusiastic user is Helen Del Vecchio, Manager of Sales and Marketing and Director of Sales Administration at NJR, who says, “We have found GlobalTracker to be a very handy tool both for us and for our representatives, in helping track a customer's production from design to final build stage, and in finding the business that might otherwise slip through the cracks.”  Specific advantages Ms. Del Vecchio points to are knowing what product is being designed in and built worldwide, getting expected production forecasts for MRP, and being able to let representatives know that NJR is on top of split commission situations.  “I’m impressed with the Beganto system and am pleased to recommend this service to every component manufacturer,” she says.

At the other end of the cycle, TT Electronics/Optek, has mandated use of Beganto’s Need-A-Sample® application company-wide.  “This web based system is very powerful, and I believe we are only scratching the surface of what it has to offer,” says Alan Bennett, VP Sales & Marketing, who sees it not only as a tool for the sales force but also as a service to customers.

Beginning to transition from using Need-A-Sample to engaging with the complete Beganto product suite is Hirose USA, which is closely monitoring 34 line item production schedules that began with sample requests.  Yasushi Nakamura, Vice President, Finance and Administration, cites the example of a wireless project, designed in the U.S. and tracked to manufacturing in Jabil facilities in Huangpu China.  “We were pioneer users of Need-A-Sample,” Mr. Nakamura says, “and we’re looking forward to having GlobalTracker serve us as well as did its older sibling.”

According to Sunil Grover, Beganto’s CEO, GlobalTracker™ complements the other elements in the collaborative Beganto system, serving both the buy side and the sell side.  For the buy side, key elements of the program (totally free to buy side users) start with Beganto’s Open Search Engine.  Then Need-A-Sample facilitates getting the evaluation components needed to complete a design, and is augmented with ancillary features like the Sample Tracker, NeedaQuote and its tracker, and NeedInfo, with its lead tracking auxiliary.  Sponsoring suppliers on the sell side get complementary access to the data, and thus are able to manage the NBO effectively.

 Holding the system together is BeON™, the Beganto Open Network. With BeON, engineers and buyers get all the benefits of the system free, as long as they commit to keep the network useful by supplying requested status information on a timely basis.  Three years of experience with the buy side modules has definitively demonstrated that they DO respond and they DO collaborate, because they appreciate the benefits of the system and its user-friendly approach.  Contrary to the expectations of doubters, it now appears that CEMs will do their part as well.  Easy to use forms and automated follow-ups help engineers track the status of the data and/or samples they’ve requested.  (Grover confesses that the response rate is not 100% -- but adds that Beganto’s supplier clients, who fund the program, have been more than satisfied with the 85% numbers Beganto has been achieving.)

Reps and distributors also have free access to the basic system, and also to all the premium services and refinements that their manufacturers contract for.  They may also upgrade their own packages with purchased services. 

It’s the Open Network that differentiates the collaborative Beganto solution from other Internet search and stock-checking services and CRM systems.  All qualified and registered users can update information, supplementing the public data that has been aggregated from supplier and distributor web sites.  Reps and distributors are also asked to place Need-A-Sample buttons on their web sites, so their site visitors have quick access to the data the system provides. Collaboration makes the difference, and gives Beganto the edge over manually aggregated or algorithmic crawler databases and over typical single-enterprise CRM systems.

More than 41,000 engineers and buyers are enrolled in BeON™ from the buy side, along with over 5000 sell side users at component suppliers and their reps and distributors.  Moreover, the supplier database goes well beyond the detailed information provided by Sponsoring Suppliers, since it also encompasses data published on the Internet by other component manufacturers in whom OEM engineers may have an interest. 

During its relatively short lifetime (the company started in 2003), Beganto has processed over 60,000 sample requests, which are estimated to have resulted in 6000 design wins and 600 volume production orders.  Not every sample request turns into a design win, Grover says, and not every design win moves on to volume production; but every volume production order started with a design win, and every design win involved a sample request somewhere along the line.  The ratio of 100 sample requests leading to ten design wins leading to 1 production order has been essentially constant throughout the four years that Beganto has been tracking samples.   The industry quandary that may be solved by broad scale adoption of the BeON program is the ability to relate a component shipment for volume production back to its origins as a sample request, and thus to assure commission credits to the reps and distributors who made it happen.

Complete information about the Open Search Engine, Need-A-Sample® , BeON™ , Design Winner Premier™ , and Beganto are available at www.beganto.com .  Printed literature is available from Beganto, Inc., 4800 Patrick Henry Drive,Santa Clara, CA 95054, USA,Phone: 1-510-722-6000, Fax: 408-492-1772, email sales(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.

BEG6013, NR, Global Tracker Goes Live
August 25, 2006