SupplyForce, AD, Border States, ElectricSmarts and DISC Deliver Sales & Marketing Tools

Over the past couple of weeks there have been some interesting industry announcements that either could represent interesting “tools” for companies or have longer term impact in the industry.  This is somewhat of an eclectic mix of topics. Please share your comments on one or all of these issues.

• John Burke taking the reins of SupplyForce could make SupplyForce an offensive force for independent distributors.  John, who had been at Kirby Risk, has significant distributor experience (including at WESCO) and, perhaps more importantly, has been involved with national accounts as he was president of SourceAlliance (the Rockwell-backed .com in 2000 that was launched to support national accounts), has been active in VNA (which is now merged with SupplyForce) and with SupplyForce.  With his leadership expect new energy and vision.  It would not surprise to see SupplyForce become more aggressive in pursuing opportunities and becoming THE independent solution for national accounts, especially industrially-oriented national accounts.  The can now compete stronger at industrial installations with Rockwell and get the MRO business (whereas WESCO has gotten companies to segregate the Rockwell business from the MRO spend.  Given the merger with VNA, Rockwell will, in all probability, be much more supportive of SupplyForce.
• AD announced an expansion into Latin America with a focus on selected countries.  Natural expansion … plays into NAFTA agreements, where manufacturers have a number of facilities (Mexico), where companies have outsourced services (Central America, most notably Costa Rica, and the Caribbean), and then into South America where they have some experience, and revenue, in Brazil (where there is also much construction due to the World Cup and the Olympics) and Columbia (which was a target for an EDGE acquisition that didn’t occur.)  It will be interesting what benefits accrue to US and Canadian members.  And it should be a good play to support national accounts (and eventually SupplyForce).
• On a marketing front:
• Check out Border States’ blog. They have many in the company involved in developing content (13) and have a proactive tool for engaging with their customers.  Websites are brochureware unless there is a customer / prospect benefit.
• DISC unveiled a new marketing research database.  It’s called Market Track Ziplines.  Now you can identify the potential of a marketplace at the zip code level by individual SICs.  Good for developing territories, targeting market segments, developing account lists, sales goal setting and more.  Combining this with other tools can enable distributors and manufacturers to target individual companies. And it is very cost-effective.
• For manufacturers who collect POS information, ideally by zip code, or distributors who aggregate their sales by zip code, this could be an interesting tool to calculate your market share.
• ElectricSmarts has introduced a new tool this quarter that could be very effective for distributors. Distributors can now essentially aggregate the e-catalogs that are in ElectricSmarts’ Smart eCat and then have the entire package branded for the distributor (and there are many features resident in the catalogs).  Now your salespeople can visit any customer and have many catalogs at the click of a button, all in the same format, many with additional marketing content linked in, and it can be set to link to pricing information. There is a nominal cost for distributors but it could be a marketplace differentiator.

For the right distributor, all of these can enhance sales as well as marketing capabilities.  How can these benefit you?