Success Story | Border States Electric

Background:

Border States personifies the progressive distributor. With 43 branches throughout eleven U.S. states and Mexico, they are the 11th largest U.S. electrical distributor with 1100 employee-owners. As a progressive distributor, Border States pertains more to their use of technology within the electrical channel. They have well surpassed the phase of adopting and implementing eCommerce technology to becoming an exemplary model on how to embrace technology and make it a cornerstone of success for their company.

Challenge:

Border States needed an eCommerce solution that allowed their trading partners to provide accurate, timely, and standardized product sales information in one central location so that they could conduct business with multiple partners efficiently and affordably while reducing errors.

"As an industry we need one place to go for up-to-date manufacturer information that serves as the master file for all pertinent product information and data," said Barry Nelson, VP of Marketing, Border States. "This includes enhanced product descriptions, packaging information, product specifications, new product information, product substitutions and discontinuation notifications from the manufacturers in the industry." Today this level of information is an "Order Winner". In the very near future it will be necessary to be viewed as an "Order Qualifier."

Solution:

Border States signed up to use Industry Data Warehouse (IDW), a service that provides the industry with the vehicle for automatic and regular synchronization and updating of product information.

IDEA is the only company that offers a service to ensure the industry uses clean and accurate manufacturer product and pricing information that meets industry standards and requirements. "Certified data is very important to distributors. Without this process, there are too many costly errors," said Nelson.

"IDW gives manufacturers the means to provide accurate product and pricing information to their distributors. Distribution needs this data in a standardized format for use across a wide variety of applications that is readily available from a single industry repository," said Nelson.

Result:

"IDW enables on-line catalog ordering systems, more customer self service and faster access to information—while reducing our cost of sales and improving accuracy, efficiency and productivity for all of us," said Nelson. "The manufacturer certainly benefits from adoption of IDW through increased marketing support from distributors that proactively market products with tools such as on-line catalogs, printed catalogs, niche market product information brochures, etc.