Over the years, however, MicroAge discovered that maintaining this sort of training program is expensive and decided to migrate this physical-world collaborative initiative to an Extranet environment. Today, nearly 1,000 VARs and 300 internal sales staff members tap into the Web site to learn the intricacies of products that they will soon pitch to their customers. Many times, some key business partners cannot or don't want to invest in Extranet initiatives with unclear business benefits or high sunk costs. The Web site includes a bookstore offering books about purchasing in Asia, as well as a trade show calendar and a product alert function that lets users list products that interest them and then receive e-mail when that type of product is available. There is also a separate section of the Web site for factories trying to unload excess stocks.
Many importers are interested in picking that up at a good price.
With this type of product, time is of the essence, so the Web is an ideal way to match buyers and sellers. This spring, says Benecke, Asian Sources Online will launch its next new service, one that will let large importers of Asian merchandise build their own catalogs of goods that they want to buy. For Asian Sources Media, persuading many remote factories in Asia's hinterlands to get with the Web was not uncomplicated. Finger, the company's vice president of electronic business development, knew that if he waited for every factory owner to buy a computer and download Netscape, he would be retired before the site reached its full potential. So ASM provided the hardware, software and training to many factories that otherwise would not have joined the network.