Long Beach, CA - Etilize, Inc., GfK product data company, announced today it has expanded its working relationship with Ingram Micro, Inc. (NYSE: IM), the world’s largest technology distributor, to include the Asia Pacific Region.

Etilize currently provides standardized product data to Ingram Micro internally to assist its North America, South America and EMEA sales force and technical support teams, as well as externally to enrich the distributor’s eBusiness tools. As part of the expanded relationship, Ingram Micro is extending the Etilize service beyond its value added resellers (VARs) to include the distributor’s retailers and e-tailers. Moving forward, this group of customers can now easily incorporate Ingram Micro SKUs into their own online ordering systems with minimal cost and effort.

Large retailers, VARS, e-tailers etc. have unique requirements related to product information that cannot be fulfilled without investing significant time and resources into product data acquisition. Companies who do not make the necessary investments to keep pace with the annual influx of new products end up missing selling opportunities - especially for those products in high demand. Listing products with incomplete or outdated product information leads to loss of opportunity, loss of product returns, and a poor customer experience in general.  

“We’ve worked with Etilize for seven years and continue to be impressed with the company’s product quality, responsiveness and willingness to go the extra mile to ensure our customers have the product information they need to maximize their sales, ” said Jonathan Newman, executive director, Global eSolutions, Ingram Micro. “By extending our use of Etilize’s comprehensive content services to countries within the Asia-Pacific region, we are expanding the use of Etilize’s data throughout our organization and adding greater value for our customers worldwide.”

“We are extremely fortunate to work with Ingram Micro,” said Azhar Hameed, President and CEO of Etilize, Inc. “As the world’s largest IT distributor, Ingram Micro demands operational excellence from us and we are pleased to expand this relationship to Asia Pacific and extend the benefits of our services to a broader set of Ingram Micro customers.”

Collecting comprehensive product data from thousands of manufacturers is a resource-intensive process. As part of the Etilize product data solution, Spex, the company makes use of its category-centric skills to standardize all collected data from manufacturers into one solution which supports both on and off-line customer needs.