This Week in IDEA | October 27, 2010

25 Ways to Boost Your Business by Electrical Wholesaling

The electrical wholesaling industry is at a rather historical crossroads that for many companies will determine how far they will survive into the 21st century. To help you set your sails for what will be a most-interesting voyage, over the next three months Electrical Wholesaling magazine will provide articles that will help you analyze the market opportunities that lie ahead. This article provides 25 ideas you can use to spark discussions with your sales and management team on where to channel your energy and resources as the economy improves. #2 in the technology section: Cut down on data errors with IDEA's suite of e-business tools.

Go to Trade News to download the entire article>

Content courtesy of Electrical Wholesaling – read more and subscribe at www.ewweb.com.  

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Preparing for the Future of Global eCommerce Standards

Global standardization is the focus of the latest issue of electroindustry, a NEMA publication. In the article “Preparing for the Future of Global eCommerce Standards,” representatives from Border States, Pentair Technical Products, Philips Lighting Company and Milbank examine the benefits of the UNSPSC-based Electrical Attribute Schema and the implementation challenges they've faced over the last year. Each company is using the schema as a resource to prepare for the future of global eCommerce and is an advocate for wider industry adoption.

Excerpts from the article:

“On the Industry Standards Committee, we’re constantly working to keep up with global and industry needs. We operate as a community of manufacturers and distributors to foresee where we need to be with our product data.”

-- Angela LiVolsi, Data Synchronization Specialist, Philips Lighting Company

“The UNSPSC-based attributes are a huge leap forward. This presents a very robust and scalable solution. With that comes some complexity, so fully implementing the attribute schema in a manufacturing organization can require a significant initial investment in set-up. However, once established, maintenance becomes a simpler matter going forward.”

-- Michael Johnson, Marketing Analyst, Pentair Technical Products

“Now that this product information is residing in a platform, it’s going to be more accessible and efficient for us to continue to build these products into our online catalog. But beyond that, I can also trust the data much more because the manufacturer has provided it. If it’s correct, then we’re just reformatting and redisplaying it as opposed to trying to reenter the data.”

-- Jason Archbold, Catalog Marketing Specialist, Border States Electric

“Offering standardized enriched product information is going to make you, as a manufacturer, easier to do business with; it’s going to make your products easier to find, access, and understand. And, in the fast-paced electronic environment that we live and work in today, that could be your only advantage.”

– Dawn Wright-Perry, Retail Services Manager, Milbank

Go to Trade News to download the entire article and read the rest of the issue>

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2010 Forum Survey Closes this Friday – Feedback Wanted

Please don't forget to complete the IDEA E-Biz Forum 2010 Survey by this Friday -- survey closes on October 29. All 2010 attendees should have received a separate email with the survey link. If you didn’t attend in 2010 and want to provide suggestions for 2011 topics, please email suggestions to or leave a comment on this announcement.

Your feedback is extremely valuable to us. We carefully review the Forum survey results and use your suggestions during our planning process each year. The survey should take approximately 10 minutes to complete. There are no mandatory questions, but we appreciate your feedback on all sessions/events you attended; all responses will be kept confidential.

Once you finish the survey and send your suggestions to help us develop the 2011 Forum agenda, be sure to access and download your favorite Forum presentations on the 2010 Forum Resources page.

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New B2B eCommerce and Synchronization Customers

IDEA welcomes one new B2B eCommerce customer and 10 new Synchronzation customers. Read more about these companies and how you can begin trading with them electronically to expand your business.

New IDX and IDW Customer

Mission Controls & Supply of San Antonio, TX recently became an IDEA customer. They provide a full range of automation, motor control and electrical products to customers in the industrial, manufacturing, construction, pharmaceutical, and energy sectors. Mission Controls & Supply serves South Texas and has an extensive network of global suppliers. They are utilizing the IDW Data Synchronization Platform to synchronize product and pricing information with suppliers and are taking advantage of the cost savings and reliability of Industry Data Exchange (IDX) to exchange B2B documents. They are a proud member of IMARK. Find out more at www.mission-controls.com.  

New IRD CERICOMX® Customers

As a 1SYNC Data Pool On-Board Solution (OBS) partner, IDEA implements suppliers that subscribe to the 1SYNC data pool using the IRD CERICOMX® Data Synchronization Platform. IDEA was recently assigned 10 suppliers:

• Blue Horizon Products, LLC 
• D3Cubed, LLC  
• DBC, Inc
• Hi-Way Concrete Products
• The Maya Group 
• Rocky Mountain Snacks 
• Red River Concrete Products
• Western Industries 
• Mrs. Fisher’s Inc
• Litex Incorporated  

These companies will be trained to use IRD CERICOMX®, an online catalog that suppliers use to register product data with the GS1 Registry® and GDSN via the 1SYNC Data Pool. Suppliers also use this solution to publish product data to demand partners including retailers such as Lowe’s and Walmart.

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