Targeting MRO buyers, Avnet, one of the industry's most savvy technical distributors, is applying the same strategies it uses in its components business to production supplies and test and measurement.

Pulling out all the stops to ensure that its products are easy to choose and buy, the Avnet PSAT group has beefed up its technical know-how with the creation of a new specialty sales channel for test and measurement. It's also added a personalized e-procurement database tool, Partfolio, to its Web site (www.avnetPSAT.com), and it offers seven warehouse and logistics sites in North America, as well as customer call centers.

The $75 million division of Avnet Electronics Marketing has also recently released a new reference catalog with up-to-date pricing and specs. The catalog can be used in conjunction with Partfolio, which allows customers to search and compare products, save their bills of materials and purchase products. All the information needed to make a purchasing or engineering decision is located at the Web site.

Tom Seratti, vice president of production supplies and test, says Avnet's e-procurement strategy is to lower the cost of transactions and better the customer's time-to-market. Although the Web is a valuable tool, distributors need brick and mortar in the form of sales, support and account managers, he said. Taking its cue from the electronic-components business, Avnet PSAT recently created a specialty test and measurement sales group to meet growing demand for a more technical sales channel. To oversee this specialty channel, the distributor brought in Dave Holt, who in past lives was Marshall's first field application engineer and director of application engineering.

The cornerstone of the T&M group is continuous training. Each member of the sales team undergoes regular testing and certification. Four test specialists with technical or engineering degrees, support the sales team.