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December 14, 2004
NEW BEGANTO OPEN NETWORK GENERATES LEADS ONLINE, TRACKS DESIGN WINS
Manufacturers, reps and distributors projected to form large installed base
Fremont , CA . A new initiative from Beganto, Inc., the Beganto Open Network (BeON™ for short), will connect manufacturers, their local reps and their distributors with engineers looking for product samples for new electronic equipment designs. According to Sunil Grover, Beganto co-founder and CEO, BeON™ not only lets engineers and buyers find, sample, and purchase components more easily; but also enables the sell-side to better track these sales leads to the point of a design win. Grover projects rapid adoption of the online program, with the large installed base of manufacturers, reps and distributors driving rapid growth.
BeON™ responds directly to part of the pain created by the billions of dollars of electronics manufacturing that have been outsourced to Asia, mainly China, over the past several years. As the U.S. has become largely a design and prototyping center for global electronics companies like Cisco, Dell, and Sony, the manufacturers’ representatives who support designers at these OEMs have been deprived of commissions because they lack evidence that the manufacturing in China is a direct result of their sales efforts in the U.S.
Not only reps, but also distributors and their vendors are affected by the tracking problem. Manufacturers need to be sure their field sales and distributor personnel are properly compensated for the sales they create and fulfill, and to cope with the amount of evidence required to properly assign credit for each sale.
Reps report that most of the lines they represent still use paper processes to track samples. Although some semiconductor manufacturers have installed sophisticated CRM solutions, these present the challenge of learning new software systems and endless data entry. Reps find themselves spending time in sales administration that they would rather use in the field, selling.
Another rep problem that the BeON™ program will alleviate is that each line has a different reporting system with different rules. Information often has to be entered multiple times to accommodate different systems.
"Beganto’s BeON™ program addresses the semiconductor, electronic and electromechanical component manufacturers’ and their reps’ problems of getting and supporting qualified sales leads and tracking them to design wins," Grover says.
As members of the BeON™ program, manufacturers and their local representatives benefit by having inquiries or sample requests generated in their territory forwarded to them instantly. Once a request is received, reps can track each opportunity on line, and readily update the other channel members, distributors and component manufacturers, as the project progresses. The program automatically follows up with the engineer or buyer to see if the opportunity has converted into a design win. Data entry is completed by the engineer or buyer and BeON™ takes care of the rest.
"BeON™ is an electronics-industry-specific program with an adoption model similar to PayPal," explains Beganto’s Mr. Grover. "Every new member who joins brings several new members. This grows BeON’s value exponentially."
Membership in the BeON™ program is free for engineers, buyers, distributors and reps and there are already over 20,000 engineers 150 reps and 75 distributors actively participating in the network, through www.needasample.com or the web sites of participating manufacturers. Manufacturers pay a subscription fee to have a Need-A-Sample® button on their web sites, and to get the design win data and to track the global sales resulting from these wins. Subscribing manufacturers include NEC Electronics America, Catalyst Semiconductor, Hirose Electric, and ALPS Electric (USA) among many others.
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., 4800 Patrick Henry Drive,Santa Clara, CA 95054, USA,Phone: 1-510-709-4665, 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.
Need-A-Sample® and BeON™ are trademarks of Beganto, Inc
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