And customers are asking for it, as this webinar from Purchasing magazine shows.
Much is made in the industry about product attributes for data content and distributors discuss the need for content-rich data to power their e-stores as well as to populate customer ordering systems.
While manufacturers do this to varying degrees; IDEA has some of this data; Trade Service attributes much of its data (and claims to have over 800,000 attributed SKUs and the same number of SKUs with graphics) and offers a catalog products (their recent newsletter talks about their commitment to attribution); distributors attribute products themselves (either through internal projects or outsourcing the work), the bottom-line is that there is a need for attributed data to support the efforts of various end-users.
Industrially-oriented distributors are familiar with this challenge as they respond to e-procurement and consolidated buying initiatives from their customers. Contractors will be asking for similar support to reduce their procurement costs, hence the advent of Trade Service’s newest offering (Supplier Exchange).
Purchasing magazine’s webinar on January 29 entitled “Content is King” will share some best practices from end-users. Understanding your customers’ needs and one of the first steps to capturing their business.
As companies seek cost savings they will be looking to technology to reduce costs and improve productivity. While there may be less employees, much of the work will remain. Quality content will enable companies to streamline ordering processes, eliminate (or significantly reduce) data entry into multiple ordering and accounting systems, improve accuracy, reduce errors and much more.
5 Comments
We are a distributor that has successfully used third party attributed content from Trade Services for several years now. Eclipse wrote their internet software around the Trade Service data and it works well for us. Having been a user of the Trade Services attributed data, I can not see how attributed data from mfgs will ever work. I understand there is a standard that all mfgs need to adhere to, but is it realistic to believe that all mfgs attributing their data will do it exactly the same way and complete all necassary fields in exactly the same way. I’m asking the question, is this realistic for our industry? In addition, will mfgs really be investing in their data over the next few years in this tough economic environment. Again, just asking the question. Everyone, please chime in on this as I think once a for all, there needs to be some realism in our marketplace on this subject. Maybe I’m off base, so I’d like to hear what others have to say.
Weve been waiting for manufacturers to provide us standardized data for far too many years now and have given up. I personally dont see how it can be accomplished without a 3rd party. We subscribe to Trade Service for our pricing needs (we tried IDW but it wasnt complete). We recently purchased Trade services attributed data and I was surprised to see how complete it was. Were going live in the next 60 days and cant wait.
Over the last several months I have seen a number of postings regarding attributed data, Trade Service and IDEA especially since the “parting of the ways” announced last August. For IDEA I think it is fair to say that they do have a way to go in order to provide attributed data similar that of Trade Service. However, in my opinion I think it is important to point out the major difference between IDW and Trade Service especially in data handling. IDW was created around providing information from manufacturers to distributors in a standardized fashion so that they can take the data in any format and link to their business system. Many of these standards are being driven from the ISC which comes from members that have committed their time in the best interest of the industry to develop these standards. When you look at the overall committee membership the numbers seem to be somewhat evenly split around manufacturers, distributor and software vendor / developers. This has always been an interesting question for me personally because you would think that there would be a larger number of distributor members since they drive the data requirements. For Trade service they have the advantage of time, since they have been around a long time they have had the benefit of legacy which is not a bad position to be in. However, since Trade Service creates and maintains their own data based on what is provided from manufactures (which currently does not include attributed data) one would have to ask how accurate is the data? Unless manufacturers are working with Trade Service to verify that attributes and products are categorized correctly this can lead to incorrect data. While I am not trying to promote one over the other, it comes down to the business question, is it better to have something and move forward (attributed data from Trade Service) than to have nothing at all (non attributed data from IDW)? I think that many would agree that the information coming from IDW in regards to pricing is standing the test of time. For the IDW and IDEA moving forward with attributed data and the standards to support them will be a challenge but in my opinion will be successful in the longer term . Again just my opinion.
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