In the words of Paul Griffin, vice-president of sales and marketing for Asbis, a $500m-plus international IT distributor of Intel, Seagate, Maxtor and Hitachi products, you have to be ‘something of a masochist who suffers amnesia once a quarter’ to be in channel distribution today. Indeed, distribution in almost all industry sectors is tough, and the internet is exacerbating these pressures. Margins continue to slide to almost unsustainable levels. Asbis, however, has managed to buck the trend for the last three years.

Alastair Hunter and Gunther De Neve of IT4profit describe how, with a fresh approach and a refined business model, B2B exchanges can begin to deliver the efficiencies they once promised.