While Fishing in the Product Database…..Part of a Series

Not the usual data suppliers
I am beginning to see more than the usual suppliers of product data for electrical distributors.

Most certainly the usual suppliers have been Trade Service, with a massive database for distributors and contractors, and IDEA with product data supplied by manufacturers as an industry solution provider. Both have their strengths and weaknesses.

The new entrant into product data is EDGENET. Now, at this point, I don’t believe that they are a threat to Trade Service or IDEA, but they could be a good complementary service. Some rather large retailers like Lowes and Wal-Mart use their services and data feeds. As do a number of electrical manufacturers and some distributors that are utilize electrical data.  One can only imagine the criteria that those retailers put on correct data feeds.

Striving for Productivity
Most distributors strive for more productivity (automation of their back office) and I see that the base/core issue is the product data that resides in their computer system. Much of that bad data has been passed along over the years without the business owner’s knowledge or recognition of the problem. Another part of bad product data is placed in the business ERP system by sales people (it’s called cramming). Many business owners do not address the continuing issue of bad data even though it can cost them large amounts of margin (2-6% points of net margin).

The Brush Fire mentality
Some distributors just ignore the bad data issue and treat it as a brush fire. Brush fires pop up daily, weekly and monthly. Someone, or several people, attempt to put the fire out on the order and move on to other brush fires. I’ve personally talked with people within some businesses that live off putting out fires, without dealing with core issues. They deal with the fire and don’t correct the source of the fire.

Good Data-Big Users
The data we’ve seen from EDGENET so far has been right on. It’s clean and consistent. Their weakness is they don’t have a lot of  electrical manufacturers. But they could have.  Their data could be used for web store fronts, SPA/rebate collection and more.

So as a complementary service could you use new clean data to drive your web productivity?