High five for Express Online

There is little denying the Internet has changed the face of not only the IT industry, but every industry possible. Today, nearly 1.3 billion people go online and it is that coverage and success which enabled distributor Express Online to reach its five-year birthday this month.

Using a solely online model has enabled the Sydney-based firm to ride the growth of Internet purchases and procurements over the past five years. In the US alone it is forecast there will be US$174.5 billion of Internet-related sales during 2007. Last year, online computer hardware and software sales totalled US$17.2 billion in the US and you can bet similar patterns can be found on local shores, too.

“We are very excited and proud to reach five years,” said Alison McQuarrie, general manager at Express Online. “We’re Australia’s first and still to this day only 100 percent online distribution option for Australian resellers.”

All of Express Online’s resellers visit the firm’s website to process almost every transaction possible from taking orders, processing returns, gathering product information, quotes, obtaining invoices, and proof of deliveries.

“Resellers can do that at anytime, when it suits them. From that we have found that a lot of our resellers place their orders out of core business hours. Forty percent of our orders are placed between 4pm and 9pm. Resellers are often out in the field during the day and doing the purchasing and procurement after hours,” said McQuarrie. “Our proposition is around providing a different distribution offering for resellers. We like to think of our offering as unique in terms of the level of service we offer alongside the functionality and interaction of our website.”

Express Online also has a customer service team of three people who field calls from customers, however McQuarrie stressed that the firm attempts to push as much information online as possible. “Customers can and do call us, we have hundreds and hundreds of calls a day, but what we try and do is identify ways to reduce that by sending resellers the information they need to our website.”

Building a virtual presence

“Our model has not changed too much over the years,” said McQuarrie. “We launched online from day one. A few things have changed, we have grown substantially since then. We started with seven vendor partners, we now have close to 30. We started with four or five staff, we now have more than 20 staff.