back to article Insight Enterprises operating profits tumble down back of sofa

Tech reselling monster Insight Enterprises saw operating profits dive on this side of the Atlantic due to a spike in operational costs and enterprise customers delaying or shelving purchases. Sales at the EMEA operation grew two per cent year-on-year to $378.4m but earnings from operations dropped by 53 per cent to $3.98m. …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And the other reasons were...

    As an Insight customer of many years, let me suggest a couple of other reasons:

    - Insight used to have one of the best websites around then things went badly wrong - a lousy redesign, plus a major slowdown in responsiveness, plus dodgy Search. Apparently they decided to junk the previously ok system and instead switch to a Microsoft Dynamics backend, which is where the problems started.

    The sales team begged them to switch back, but apparently they either couldn't or wouldn't. Only now is the site starting to be usable.

    - They used to be very reliable on delivery (used PArcelForce) but then moved to using third party man-and-his-grubby-van operations such CityLink. I've spent hours waiting for next day items which never came till the second day.

    - HAving spoken to an ex member of staff, they say that the next great management move is to try and reduce the number of phone staff - which is a bit dumb, as Insight's really friendly and well trained staff are about the only asset they have left.

    Interestingly we all got a 'Tell Us What You Think of Us' survey from Insight - amazing what a dip in profits can do for customer relations..

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Most of the larger VAR's have moved from warehousing the vast majority of goods themselves to shipping direct from Distribution Companies. The "third party man-and-his-grubby-van" is usually contracted to the distributor.

    For better or worse this is a model resellers are stuck with, along with dodgy stock feeds, strange pricing models and lost or missed deliveries. But it's saving us money and with many of us making between just 2 and 5% on our goods and despite the hours we spend negotiating with manufacturers and distributors on our customers behalf we can still lose a deal on a notebook because another VAR is selling it 20p cheaper.

    No I don't work for Insight, but if you want cheaper goods then sure as hell expect to pay for it another way.

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