Over the last several decades the distributor and electrical market has benefited from the data aggregation services provided by Trade Service (TSC). Many of their printed and computerized products contained essential information that allowed distributors to order from their manufacturers and for contractors to estimate/bid large and small projects. But there were no data standards that allowed the distributor to use the same transitional data at their store fronts.. As many would find out the product descriptions needed to follow a schema of how words were spelled and in various field lengths.
IDEA was formed by NEMA manufacturers and many NAED distributors (the original concept was the top 20 manufacturers and distributors, feeling the rest would follow) to drive cost out of the channel through data synchronization. The goal was to capture productivity and harness computerization (Productivity). For a while TSC fed transactional data to IDEA’s Industry Data Warehouse (IDW), but they soon parted on friendly terms. IDEA set about helping manufacturers to populate the IDW with a recognized schema and standard. The results of that work were recognized by ElectricalTrends on Oct. 23rd is a post titled “The Beginning of the Crumbling of a Monopoly?” In addition to complimenting the manufacturers and IDEA on their Platinum Band of Excellence, the post raises several questions about:
- Quality of Data (mistaken data descriptions, abbreviations that are not consistent and more that are still in the channel)
- Is the quantity of data in IDEA’s IDW the right amount of data for a distributor?
But there is a solution available to getting Certified IDEA IDW data to the contractor and it comes from ElectricSmarts Network.
We’ve watched with interest as Electric Smarts Network has introduced a product for distributos named ESMARTS’NetPak. It is made up of three component parts.
- SmarteCat which is searchable by part # or word search library of manufacturer catalogs. Self contained are ‘How-to-videos’ and the ability to build submittals by participating in the ElectricSmarts network.
- Net-Pricer Service which started out connecting contractors with distributors 24/7 for accurate bid pricing. What it originally lacked was high quality data. Some distributors were using TSC and or IDEA IDW Certified data.
- Smart e-Data accesses IDEA’s Certified IDW data. This part of the Esmarts NetPak offers part numbers, descriptions, trade prices and cut sheets.
- Assuming that IDEA does have enough data coverage, how do you see developing your contractor market with their various estimating packages?
- How could you measure your company’s success using IDEA’s Certified data coupled with your pricing?
5 Comments
Finally a pipeline to Contractors with data and all out marketing material.
Great move on IDEA’s part. And very smart move on the part of Electric Smarts to recognize the opportunity.
ED from CA
Thumbs up for IDEA for following through on data standards. I’m sure you have more in the pipeline.
Kool move of Electric Smarts/net pricer’s part.
We attended the NECA show where Electric Smart/Net Pricer announced the offering of IDEA’s Certified data. And they are at the Independent Electrical Contractor’s meeting this week. Pending more details of how we help this process along, it should help us and our contractors who bid a large quantity of jobs to work closer.
I suspect that manufacturers like the idea that their How to Videos and product sheets are accessible.
Certified IDEA Data….
and a all in one site/connection for a contractor to hook to a distributor. I presume they will or already cover all the commodities?
Is there a list of all the different contractor programs that is linkable?
From a NM Dist.
OK. We’ll need to look into this in more detail as we are a current user of IDEA’s data.
How will the contractor be able to match our data? Many of these contractors have different data and UPC’s. We’ll want to overlay the contractors request with our data and prices.
Maybe ElectricSmarts and Net Pricer can explain.
From what we have seen with in the IDEA database, the commodity issue is solved. IDEA has a numbering schema for a UPC.
From our stand point the IDEA data combined with the ElectricSmart catalogs offer pictures of the items and some even have how to install videos. We will post their product at our company web site.
It will take some time to get all the videos out there, but it seems to have real product pictures. Some even let you look at different angles of the product.
LA Distributor
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