Where’s the product content for your website?

You may remember the Wendy’s commercial called “Where’s the beef?”  The essence was competitive hamburger chains had small burgers.

With e-Commerce initiatives we could ask “where’s the content?” While launching an initiative can be costly (time and financial), the bigger challenge is “where to get all of your product content from?”

Lately we’ve had a number of conversations with distributors, and some manufacturers, regarding their websites.  Inevitably the conversation eventually gets to “content.”

There are different types of content that distributors need for their websites. They break down into:

• company information – how to position your organization and highlight your services
• valued-added content – why should someone come to your site and what tools to offer
• product content – which is used for powering your e-commerce engine.

It’s the last one that the industry continues to be challenged with.

While the industry’s two prevalent data sources, IDEA (through its IDW) and Trade Service (with its eDataFlex offering) can provide 100,000’s of attributed SKUs with graphics, spec sheets and more.

The challenge is that, today, neither offers a complete solution for many distributors due to many small and “niche” (non-core electrical) manufacturers not being in either system.  Yes, content can be created (and Trade Service has an offering called Custom Data Solutions to address this and Unilog offers such a service – and other companies do also), but

• should distributors be paying for manufacturer content, let alone be responsible for maintaining it?
• should multiple distributors have to pay multiple times for the same manufacturer content to be developed?
• and what are the data sources for other industries that electrical distributors diversify into (datacom, automation (for Rockwell distributors, think of Encompass partners) safety, industrial suppliers, power transmission, plumbing, etc)

In conversations with distributors, aside from key suppliers, we’ve suggested

• focusing on stock-oriented lines
• targeting suppliers who offer e-commerce on their sites (they obviously have data) but that they need to talk to regional / senior management rather than reps
• consider developing “data consortiums” with other distributors to pressure manufacturers
• work through their marketing group to gain critical mass (and/or pressure) or, if you want to fund development, a way to share the costs
• gain insight from IDEA on which lines it will begin to “source” and obtain a specific timeline for delivery

IDEA is focused on increasing the amount and quality of catalog (marketing) content available in the Industry Data Warehouse (IDW) for distributors. The IDW Bands of Excellence initiative was launched in 2012 to help manufacturers focus their efforts on what distributors said are essential marketing content needed at a minimum to add a product to their web store (Spec docs, Attributes, Images and Descriptions, also known as the SAID elements), and since then, the marketing content in the IDW has increased by more than 10x. The majority of the catalog content in the IDW is provided directly from the manufacturer and IDEA is transparent in the source of the content so that distributors know where it came from. IDEA built the IDW Analytics Tool to help manufacturers pinpoint data quality issues and fix them in their business system (up to a 400% improvement in data quality has been seen), and IDEA recently built a new data quality tool for distributors that enables them to easily report specific data quality issues (e.g. this image is distorted) right from the IDW so that IDEA can work with the manufacturer to fix the issue. Finally, IDEA began an initiative in 2013 known as the “Innovating for the Future” Plan which continues to improve the catalog content available to distributors. For example, IDEA’s normalized the top 15 product attributes in the IDW (e.g. brand, color, frequency rating) to create consistencies in the way products are described and searched across manufacturers. Distributors can schedule a 1-on-1 with IDEA to find out more about the content available through the IDW and send their line cards so that IDEA can let them know which brands have content available in the IDW today

Trade Service

Trade Service acts as a repository for manufacturers’ data in several industries including electrical, plumbing, HVAC, PVF, and industrial supplies.   Trade Service aggregates, normalizes, and standardizes the manufacturer’s data, so that it can be easily imported and processed in a distributor’s enterprise distribution system.  Most ERP system providers include a Trade Service interface in their standard package of functionality.  Typically, our eDataFlex services can provide the following benefits:  

•  Automatically maintain distributor product files with up-to-date price and product information including maintenance of UPC codes
• Effectively merchandise non-stock items by enabling an on-board catalog containing all of  the items a distributor represents through their supplier relationships
•  Automatic maintenance of manufacturer net pricing through our MSP Program
• Connect a distributor’s pricing to selected commercial contractor customers via Supplier Xchange
•  Enhance distributor e-commerce initiatives with rich descriptions, product images, catalog pages, installation instructions, and MSDS sheets
• Improve customer service by giving distributor staff immediate access to manufacturer catalog page and specification PDFs that can be automatically disseminated to customers
• Enable mobile applications like Innovo to improve customer service and improve the effectiveness of distributor outside sales staff

Custom Content Services

Additionally, the Trade Service content team has the capability to build content according to a distributor’s  specific requirements.

From capturing images to building attributed data according to specific parameters,  Trade Service Custom Content Services (CCS) enables a distributor to define the content they need, but outsource obtaining the source materials, harvesting the defined information, loading it into a structured format, and delivering it according to unique requirements.

Because Trade Service has a highly experienced but low cost content factory approach, it can provide these services at a fraction of the cost of an in-house project, while delivering content quality, consistency, and schedule reliability, even on large volume projects.

We do not favor one vs the other data services. In fact, we have clients using both (and sometimes clients are using both and are using a product information management system (PIM) to manage the process).

While there is no “right” or “wrong” solution, independents are at a financial disadvantage in developing a comprehensive e-commerce strategy.  But the beginning of an approach is better than no approach.  Content can be continually added.

What are your thoughts on product content?

And if you need contacts for either IDEA or Trade Service, email us.