Tech Pacific
BASED: Roseberry, NSW
BRANCH OFFICES: VIC, ACT, WA, SA, QLD
PEOPLE: 660
REVENUE: $800+ million
BRANDS: 70 brands including Compaq, HP, IBM, Cisco, 3Com, Microsoft, Symantec, QuantumDespite the challenge this year from strong local players like Express Data and international giants like Ingram Micro, Tech Pacific has stood its ground and remains a dominant leader in the Australian distribution market.
"Our vision statement is to be the leading distribution partner of choice in terms of both our customers and suppliers," said Ann Mossman, Tech Pac's director of sales and marketing.
"Over the last 10 years, I think we have fulfilled that vision."
According to Tech Pacific, big is most certainly better.
With 70 vendors covering the spectrum of the industry, the distribution kingpin is the only player in the market who can even pretend to offer resellers a one-stop shop solution today, Mossman said.
"By having the widest range of leading brands in the marketplace, it allows us to consolidate our customers' purchasing power and as a result reduce their cost of doing business," she said.
"The less suppliers a reseller has to deal with, the lower their operational costs. No one else carries even half of our product range."
Tech Pacific touts its excellent ordering and logistics capabilities as being a key differentiator. "Our core competency is as a supply-chain manager. That's our expertise and we believe we do it better than anyone else," Mossman said.
Tech Pac's gigantic warehousing facility is in Sydney, meaning it can offer same-day delivery to Sydney customers and guarantee next day for the rest of the country, except Perth.
Tech Pacific didn't even rate as one of the top innovators in the distribution market a couple of years ago, according to Inform research, but last year was judged the most innovative. That result can almost certainly be put down to its pioneering Web initiatives. However, according to Mossman, Tech Pac is far from finished innovating in that arena.
"Our Web strategy moving forward is to allow resellers to track and trace everything, including things like order status, through our Web site. It's almost there today but it won't be long before we are completely there," Mossman said.
"We're also going to allow resellers to customise their use of the Web site so that they see what they want to see rather than the whole Web site as they see it today."
Mossman also boasted that Tech Pacific has been offering virtual site capabilities, like that now being offered by competitors like Express Data, to resellers including Harris Technology for some time now.
"That's old hat for us," she said. Mossman added that Tech Pac's aggressive use of the Web has been tied to its fundamental belief that it must make maximum use of technology as it becomes available.
While Tech Pacific is primarily viewed as a time-and-place distributor, like many of its competitors it is aiming to extend its touch into lower-level services.
"We've already been configuring routers and other networking equipment as well as Unix products but we're going to extend those capabilities throughout the business where it makes sense," Mossman said.
"We're aiming to take as much of the product handling and configuration costs away from the reseller so that we can handle any capability that they don't see as their core competency," she said.
"That then lets them invest their capital in their core competencies."
Tech Pacific's technical support is limited to pre-sales information.
(02) 9381 6000
http://www.techpac.com.au