Commenting on how dealers are being affected by market conditions today, Everitt stated: “Underneath the bravado of 'everything's fine’ and ‘we're having a great year', I get the feeling that there is some sweeping pain out there. There will be exceptions - those that are doing something different to what they have always done - but those that are doing much the same that they have for the last few years will be finding things tough.
“The goalposts have moved considerably, at each end of the pitch,” continued Everitt. “The operators are squeezing the distribution channel, which is wringing the neck of cashflow and creating bundles. There’s more admin associated with this, more overheads to manage this smaller reward, and the customers, generally SMEs, are hurting. If a dealer is lucky to have same number of accounts, meaning none of them have gone bust in the last 12 months, in general the fleets are smaller due to the crunch, so the bosses find more time to get competitive quotes out to try to squeeze everything they can out of each supplier.”
Everitt added that he has new product, Panaramix, to counter this, but it is obvious from distributors’ and dealers’ reactions that they are desperate for additional revenue streams, he claimed. “Honest opinion, I think some dealers will go, either squeezed out or get bored with it all.”
Mobile phone distributer, Fone Logistics, has announced it will be providing Panaramix, the new mobile tracking and field service application. Panaramix allows business users to keep in touch with field-based workers, manage jobs remotely and deploy resources.