This Week in IDEA | November 08, 2006

New IDEA Customer

City Plumbing & Electric Supply Co., a distributor from Gainesville, GA, became an IDEA customer on November 3, 2006. Their seven locations throughout Northeast Georgia covers a wide selection including the complete line of Kohler residential and commercial plumbing products, Kichler Lighting, electrical products from Cutler-Hammer, Siemens/ITE, and Pass & Seymour Legrand. They will be using the Industry Data Warehouse (IDW2) to obtain their suppliers' product and pricing information. They will also be taking advantage of the cost saving features and reliability of the Industry Data Exchange (IDX2). They are a member of IMARK. To learn more about City Plumbing & Electric Supply Co., please visit them here.

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New IRD CERICOMX® Customer

IDEA, a 1SYNC Data Pool On-Board Solution (OBS) partner, implements suppliers that subscribe to the 1SYNC data pool using IDEA's IRD CERICOMX application. IDEA was recently assigned the following suppliers:

- Skotz Manufacturing Inc.
- Grabill Country Meats, Inc.

These companies will be trained to use IRD CERICOMX®, an IDEA branded product for supporting and uploading supplier product information into the GS1 Registry® and GDSN via the 1SYNC Data Pool.

If you would like to learn more about the CERICOMX® product, please contact John Etrie, IDEA IRD Product Manager, here or at (703) 562-4624; or Tony Gaffney, IDEA CERICOMX® Implementation Manager, here or at (508) 386-0261.

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IDW2 Data Quality Maintenance Training

The IDEA IDW2 Data Administration group rolled out a new training program to help manufacturers provide cleaner data, more frequent updates and faster turnarounds in loading new pricing updates and promoting data synchronization between trading partners.

All manufacturers benefit from this training even though the initial focus is on manufacturers that are currently providing their pricing and product IDW2 updates via flat file instead of EDI. The IDW2 provides the best and most effective mechanism to get product information to the channel. However, many manufacturers may not have full understanding on how to populate their own data into the IDW2. Considering how often product and price information may change at a manufacturer, it is very important that they have a better understanding on how to control the release of their updated product and pricing information into the IDW2.

Following the three session Data Quality Maintenance training courses, manufacturers will be better prepared to submit their own data updates to the IDW2. For those who have completed the IDEA Data Audit Certification program, the new training provides the best practices for maintaining high quality data. Since good data quality requires attention and follow-up, IDEA recommends scheduled data reviews by each manufacturers’ data team. The five manufacturers’ that have already completed the training are: Bridgeport Fittings, Federal Signal, General Cable Corporation, Hubbell Corporation and Philips Lighting.

The training focuses on the importance of “building the base” for getting your IDW2 data completely updated, identifying your current IDW2 counts, ensuring required fields are populated and that all items have the correct life-cycle codes. Once this base is established, then the file is used as the starting point for future updates. Understanding the purpose and use of IDW2 life-cycles, developed by the IDEA Standards Committee, is covered in the first training session and is necessary for accurate data management. Distributor ERP software relies on accurate and consistent transmission of these codes to help distributors maintain their own data and keep inventory costs down.

Good quality cannot be achieved without a thorough understanding of the IDEA Product Description Data fields (PDD). Data fields must be consistently populated by all manufacturers for delivery via IDW2 outbound mapping to the distributors. The second session includes in-depth training of 103 of the EZView/PIPE’s fields since this format is frequently used for flat file. The EZView/PIPE format is a subset format containing all of the required and most popular fields found in IDEA’s robust PDD file format. Manufacturers planning to submit their own data are taught all of the tips and tricks in converting their own data files into IDW2 loads.

In the third session, manufacturers learn about using the IDW2’s Test System and measuring their data improvements against the IDW2’s stringent data scrubbing engine. Instructions are provided on troubleshooting data error and recommendations are provided on error avoidance. Beth Badrakhan, IDW2 Data Manager, customizes training by using the manufacturers’ own data, requirements and issues.

With the goal of more frequent updates and faster turnarounds, IDEA is revolutionizing data delivery in the electrical industry. Data training is available upon request to

Beth Badrakhan at 703-562-4602.

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WEBINAR: What Suppliers Should Know Before They Begin a VMI Program

Join us for a Webinar on November 17th!

Presenters: Bob Jennings, Vice President of Sales,
Datalliance; Bob Kuntzman, Requirements Planning Manager,
McNaughton-McKay Electric Company

Title: What suppliers should know before they begin a VMI program
Date: Friday, November 17, 2006
Time: 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EST

Vendor managed inventory continues to gain in popularity within the electrical industry. This webinar will highlight some of the challenges encountered when establishing a successful VMI relationship and will provide insight from one of the industry’s leading distributors.

Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar seat now here.

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Nine Months

NINE MONTHS. It may take that long to set up an electronic trading connection to a major supplier or customer. Nine months for each and every one? This may be a familiar scenario at your company because you are engaged in doing all the integration and connections yourself. Worse, those connections - whether via email, the Web or EDI - may all be supported by different and ultimately inefficient processes inside your company. Some companies have to chase down orders via phone, fax or email or manually key in EDI data into their ERP system – not very efficient and prone to errors and delays.

Plenty of today’s supply chains are slowed and even crippled by entrenched manual processes and disconnected enterprise systems. In April 2006 Aberdeen Group reported that 60% of companies described their current supply chain processes as manual, spread sheet intensive, only partially automated and dependent on different software systems within their own companies. The reason for the disconnect (s) are many: the company may be struggling with their own ERP applications never mind connecting to and integrating with their partners. Again the Aberdeen survey indicated that complete internal integration would give them a competitive advantage – if only they could manage to do it.

Most back office enterprise systems were not designed to support the multi-application external facing services that real time supply chains require – they are pretty inflexible. Whether you realize it or not those that think that they can connect multiple external systems and have the staff and money to do it and the communication protocols like EDI and XML will somehow integrate their supply chain information for them are not in tune with mainstream thinking. Fortunately there are hosted third party solutions that can blend the traditional capabilities of a Value Added Network with supply chain information. Whether using EDI, flat file, EDIFACT or XML standards these systems act as a gateway for partner to partner collaboration. A single electronic connection to all customers and suppliers. This strategy has so transformed the possibilities in supply chain networking that companies that have not investigated it have an obsolete understanding of the market.

In a July 2006 survey by IDC, companies were asked how many ways do they collaborate with their supply chain partners; 88% cited email, 73% FAX, 62% telephone and 50% stated mail. These methods, which depend on manual labor, have prevented many companies from capitalizing on real B2B collaboration. Of the so called high tech methods Microsoft Excel was cited as the most popular supply chain planning system – Yikes! As most know Microsoft Excel is not scalable and it does not promote collaboration either internally or externally.

While EDI has been a staple for many decades many companies shied away from adopting EDI because of the costs that have made EDI via a Value Added Network very expensive and complex.

With the advent of IDX2, a web-based communications service, companies can communicate through a single location to all their trading partners, suppliers and customers that are using other VAN or exchange services. IDX2 can also complete a direct connection to trading partners that have set up their own system connection such as AS-2. Order management information may also be delivered from the IDW2 via the IDX2 at no charge to the customer. Product and pricing data obtained from the IDW2 is used for completing purchase orders in either, EDI, Flat file or XML formats, which are subsequently routed to the trading partner via the IDX2. Both IDX2 and IDW2 are designed to interface with all ERP applications with set up and implementation at the users pace – even as fast as 1-3 days.

Implementing IDW2 and IDX2 requires a few basics:

1. Computer or business operating system
2. Internet Service Provider and Web Browser
3. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application

If you plan to implement EDI you would need:

1. EDI translation software or
2. EDI module that may be part of your ERP program

Alternatively if you don’t want to invest in EDI translation software or an EDI module you can adopt industry flat file standards and use those file formats for exchanging purchase orders, invoices etc.

There is big advantage to using IDX2 and IDW2 is the ability to communicate with different communications protocols found in today’s supply chain For example, one company may communicate in EDI while another is using Flat file or XML. IDX2 enables the front end translation from one language to another at no charge as long the customer is using the industry standards and maps. Custom maps may be created at a nominal fee.

The IDX2 tracker also provides tremendous document visibility and summary information that keeps the customer abreast of specific business document activity.

Going forward improvements are being made to make both the IDW2 and IDX2 better for the user community. The IDW2 recently formed a user group which enables customers to make suggestions for new functions and capabilities. IDX2 customers will be invited to an upcoming Webinar that will explain some of the new tracker system features.

Many companies are locking on to the IDX2 and IDW2 way of doing business with their suppliers and customers. And given the results to date no one wants to go back to the old days of sending emails and Faxes.

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