It seems that most/all of our competitors work this way, and I wonder why they're so inflexible. We negotiate different rates for every customer (although it turns out that in practice, most smaller customers work out essentially the same).
There's much more to pricing than just "you get 10% off regular price". It may come out that a company who replaces their computers less frequently, is more concerned about software costs than hardware, so we can adjust according to those categories. And, of course, in the realm of large customers, there are the licensing agreements that they negotiate directly with the manufacturers. So every one of our customers has a customized catalog reflecting their specific needs.
I happen to be responsible for the systems that maintain all this catalog data. Updating all of this (our master product list is well over a million products, multiplied by the costs offered for various customer types [e.g., education frequently gets a lower underlying cost] from all of our various suppliers, is a mountain of data) in a timely fashion, when our distribution costs and inventory levels change nightly, is a real technical challenge.
There's much more to pricing than just "you get 10% off regular price". It may come out that a company who replaces their computers less frequently, is more concerned about software costs than hardware, so we can adjust according to those categories. And, of course, in the realm of large customers, there are the licensing agreements that they negotiate directly with the manufacturers. So every one of our customers has a customized catalog reflecting their specific needs.
I happen to be responsible for the systems that maintain all this catalog data. Updating all of this (our master product list is well over a million products, multiplied by the costs offered for various customer types [e.g., education frequently gets a lower underlying cost] from all of our various suppliers, is a mountain of data) in a timely fashion, when our distribution costs and inventory levels change nightly, is a real technical challenge.