Hitting the target

With the value-add goalposts constantly moving, it's more important than ever to keep your business on the penalty spot

Is it just me or do the value-add goalposts keep moving? Take perfume, for example. Five years ago, perfume shops would add value by gift-wrapping whatever the customer chose.

This offered savings in terms of time (wrapping it yourself) and money (buying paper and bows) and made the product more prestigious.

But these days we walk into the same shop and simply expect the gift to be wrapped, free of charge and as standard. The retail sector has had to come up with new ways of adding value.

This is why at CRN we are continually adapting to show our readers how to score that precious added-value goal.

This week we have launched two brand-new sections: a specialised Audiovisual news section and our new Green Pages and Classified section.

With our weekly hard-hitting Audiovisual section, CRN aims to guide readers though this £2.5bn sector and help them provide value, gain margin and ultimately improve revenue.

The audiovisual sector is still in its toddler years for the IT channel, but backed up by behemoths such as Cisco, Sony, Microsoft, Panasonic, Samsung and Toshiba, it's a space VARs cannot afford to ignore, especially when these vendors are looking to the channel to help them win market share.

The government is already ploughing £50m into education establishments to fund audiovisual deployments. And even a small slice of a £50m windfall in just one vertical would make a welcome present for any business.

Our new Green Pages section is all about doing business more efficiently. The comprehensive listings offer readers invaluable channel details such as vendor and distributor phone numbers and web addresses, the sector within which they operate and exactly who is partnering with whom.

This will save precious time when it comes to sourcing the products your firm needs to fulfil customer needs.

With these two new sections, CRN is aiming to help you keep up with those moving goalposts and put your businesses on the penalty spot, ready to score.