Comms Dealer publisher BPL Media Group has bridged the channel's marketing and end-user knowledge gap by signing a ground-breaking deal with technology information resource and search engine, Conjungo (www.conjungo.com), that will enable resellers to get in front of the biggest and fastest growing technology buying community in the UK.

The new ICT search engine and information site is set to better Google and its rivals and provide regular, qualified sales leads for dealers and resellers who will generate leads from business people keen to talk to them. Meanwhile, vendors can influence a focused buying community by sponsoring specific ‘Go Understand' sites and general areas of the comprehensive buyer-centric Conjungo site. "This truly is a win-win marketing tool for the channel and we are very excited about the opportunities it presents Comms Dealer and our readership community," said publisher Nigel Sergent.

Conjungo is unique because it directly and comprehensively addresses end user and ICT channel requirements. Founder David Cruse enthused: "We are now building a vast community to help inform and educate users about technology and seamlessly engage with the suppliers of it. It couldn't be simpler!"
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The channel's lead generator
The Conjungo lead-generation tool is truly revolutionary and heralds a new era of customer engagement by giving technology buyers direct access to qualified local suppliers, and easy to understand information about technology, from one source and all just one click away. Nigel Sergent, Comms Dealer Publisher, enthused: "Conjungo is what the channel has been crying out for and we are absolutely delighted to be the media partner for such an exciting project. BPL's investment takes the very core of our effective vendor, distributor and channel communication to a new level by supporting buyer needs and delivering an effective lead-generation service back to all the component parts within the buying cycle. Conjungo represents the most compelling and exciting business development tool the channel has seen in a decade."

"Conjungo provides the only platform that gives resellers a level playing field where they can promote themselves to a vast technology buying community"

Addressing the failings that exist within the supplier-buyer engagement process is the future of the channel and Dave Cruse, founder and CEO of Conjungo, is reaffirming his commitment to generate new business for ICT resellers and hails Conjungo as ‘The next Big Thing'. "We already have the biggest single technology supply community of any website of this type in the world. As a start point that's pretty good. We can only improve on that by building a strong community," he said.

The buying cycle involves three independent parts: the vendor community, the reseller channel and the end user community. The biggest and most influential group within that cycle is the end user community. "We took on board all of their issues and addressed them head on," said Cruse. "We've listened to a number of the intrinsic groups within the buying cycle. On one side you have the vendor community that wants to drive the end user into the channel. You have a channel that wants to get in touch with the end user community. But more importantly the issue is what the end user community wants from a search tool like Conjungo. They've defined for us the parameters they would like to search on. And for the resellers of our vendor community it provides the only platform that gives resellers a level playing field where they can promote themselves to a vast technology buying community."

Cruse cited an example of an end user looking for a VoIP provider in the Retail sector. "They simply want to ensure that they can go and find VoIP providers that have experience of selling into the retail sector, are based within a specific location, and they want immediate access to relevant information," he said. "There is nowhere in the world where end users can type in their criteria and gain access to the resellers of a vendor that sell VoIP against that criteria. Conjungo allows the end user community to do just that and get a set of results back that are 100 per cent relevant."
Closing a loop in the buying cycle and getting the balance right represents the biggest marketing breakthrough for ICT dealers and resellers ever. Cruse explained: "By resolving two fundamental issues for the buying community - specifically, ‘where do I go to find a range of technology suppliers' and ‘I don't understand today's technology' - companies such as Symantec, Citrix, Wyse, Websense and Cisco are supporting Conjungo by sponsoring many of our knowledge sites. These organisations are perceived as vendors that support giving plain English knowledge to the end user community. It's a bit like all roads lead back to Rome - Rome being Conjungo."

One of the reasons that the knowledge problem exists, said Cruse, is that the vendor community tends to communicate to the end user audience in hard-to-understand technical language. "End users like to hear about things in plain English," he stated. "Conjungo offers a range of microsites under the sub-brand of ‘Go Understand' to plug this knowledge gap. If you ask the end user community to explain unified communications they would glaze over. They might have heard of the term but the vast majorities do not understand the benefits and value of UC to their business, nor the returns on investment they could get by implementing a UC solution. By offering the end user community the ability to read in plain English the true meaning of unified communications we break down a fundamental barrier to purchasing, which is a conceptual barrier called ‘I don't understand'."

It follows that ICT buyers who do not understand a product or solution will not invest in one. By breaking down the knowledge barrier the next logical process within the buying cycle is for potential buyers to engage with suppliers. Cruse added: "Within Go Understand unified communications, for example, we articulate the information to help users understand UC. We then provide a search interface that enables them to seamlessly identify ‘unified communications' suppliers. These suppliers are the channel partners of the vendors we are engaged with. We are building a strong community whereby we're giving total visibility to all the resellers who operate in specific technology domains by giving them access, not only through Conjungo but through all of our relevant microsites and through a very extensive and growing list of media owners and trusted advisors that will be integrating our ‘Powered by Conjungo' supplier search technology directly into their web sites. We are connecting the two independent groups together to enable the buying community to engage more effectively with the resellers and the vendors that we work with."

Conjungo is the Latin word for ‘to unite'. And as Conjungo gears up to unite the channel with unprecedented sales and online marketing opportunities Cruse adds further insight into the lead generating dynamics of the Conjungo proposition. "The Google model heavily biases towards the more you pay the further up the rankings you climb in AdWords," said Cruse. "But that independent access to the channel isn't there because very few resellers have the big budgets to do Google. The majority are invisible to the customers they are trying to reach and Conjungo completely resolves that problem by giving search users a visibility to channel like never before."

Significantly, Comms Dealer publisher BPL Media Group gives Conjungo the credibility and capability to work with experienced publishing and online professionals whose joint goal will be to deliver an excellent online experience that unites the buyer and supplier, giving RoI back to the vendor and their channel. Cruse underlined the synergy: "I'm excited about the opportunity of working with BPL for a number of reasons. One is from a credibility perspective. BPL and all of its titles have a great deal of respect in the vendor and channel community. So it was important for us to align our business with the credibility that BPL gave us.

"It immediately gives us the infrastructure and resources of a much bigger company, and that's only good for us as we expand. And it gives us the ability to grow the business at a global level, which I know is what BPL wants us to do and its very much what our vendor and channel community wants us to do. It's a perfect fit."