Navigation:  How Do I?... > How do I access product and pricing information from D&H, Ingram Micro, SYNNEX, and Tech Data?

QuoteWerks Professional and Corporate Edition can access product and pricing information from IT Industry distributors D&H, Ingram Micro, SYNNEX, and Tech Data.

 

Specialized integration was written for these distributors based on customer demand and because they provide product and pricing data in an industry standard database format or a text file format. Ingram Micro and Tech Data provide their data in a both database format and a text file format.  D&H and SYNNEX provide their data only in a text file format. 

 

Since Ingram Micro and Tech Data provide their data in either format, QuoteWerks can link directly to their databases or import their product list.  The import of Ingram Micro's product list can take up to 25 minutes.  D&H and SYNNEX data can only be imported and it currently it takes up to 17 minutes to import the SYNNEX product data.

 

When these pricing databases were first introduced, they where a vast improvement over the old paper price guide. That being said, the next hurdle was the fact there was no unified way to find products and compare pricing in all of their databases. It was a very time consuming process to search for products using each of the distributor’s different pricing applications or websites. You would have to revert back to writing down the part numbers and cross-referencing them.

 

Then, we introduced QuoteWerks. QuoteWerks can access all of the distributor product databases at the same time AND pull the product and pricing information into your quote quickly and easily, where the data can be easily manipulated and presented to your customer in a professional format.

 

If you purchase from a distributor other than D&H, Ingram Micro, SYNNEX, or Tech Data, and that distributor provides you with product/pricing information in a database or text file format, you can still import that information into QuoteWerks.

 

You cannot add, edit, or delete products from an external product source but there is a workaround; you can setup a native product database and copy some of your commonly used products into it.  Then you can edit the copy of the product that is now in a native product database, and on the advanced tab, select the vendor that the product was copied from.  This will ensure that when the product is added to the quote, the correct vendor name will be associated with this product.  The advantage of copying products from the external product source to a native product database is that you can modify the vendor’s often cryptic descriptions, and you can use the folders feature only available for native product databases to group and organize those products.

 

Note: When products from the Ingram Micro, SYNNEX, or Tech Data databases are copied into a native product database, and these products are selected to be added to the quote from the surrogate native product database, the latest cost value will be automatically retrieved from the Ingram Micro, SYNNEX, or Tech Data database.

 

Before you can link to the offline product databases you will need to obtain them from your distributor.

 

For details, see the Link to D&H topic, Link to Ingram Micro topic, the Link to SYNNEX topic, and the Link to Tech Data topic.

 

The Looking up and adding products to the quote chapter in the user manual will explain how to retrieve products from these linked distributor offline price guides.