Much is made of distributors needing commerce enabled websites … and it is true and is becoming a customer expectation. While ERP companies say they can support distributors in this endeavor, few distributors speak well of their ERP companies providing customer-satisfying ecommerce sites. There are alternatives.
But as the conversation moves to mobility, the challenges become more difficult, and sometimes more costly. 
Earlier this year Channel Marketing Group surveyed electrical contractors, end-users and influencers (engineers and architects). A little over 300 responses were received.
The respondent breakdown was:
- 37% contractor
- 22% industrial
- 16% engineer / architect
- 8% institutional (healthcare, education, government)
- 5% commercial (i.e. retail, office buildings)
We asked “which of these e-tools do ‘you’ use to interact with distributors and/or manufacturers?” They could select multiple devices. Their responses:
- 79% desktops
- 46% laptops
- 38% smartphones
- 12% tablets
We then asked “Which of these activities do you do on your tablet / smartphone? (check all that apply)” The question was purposely positioned a little vague as to for any type of product and, in some instances, electrical (work) usage as we wanted to gain insight into their comfort in using their tablets and smartphones. Their usage is:
As you can see, lots of usage for key business activities and, inevitably, some of these numbers may be higher since the research was conducted.
This begs some questions of:
- Should you be asking your customers what they are doing with their phones / tablets and what their ebusiness / ecommerce needs are today (and will be tomorrow)? Do you have an eBusiness “product” roadmap that includes various phases for service / functionality roll-out?
- Can you afford to wait till data is perfect or do you need to do something NOW? Unfortunately not everyone has the resources of Grainger, Amazon, Graybar, Crescent … but can you afford to wait till perfection? (Hint, it won’t happen, sorry.) Starting something and building upon it is the IT / eBusiness mantra. Build it and they will come (and a little marketing can act as an accelerant) and then obsolete yourself!
- Given the number of new branches that have recently been opened, consider if some of those monies were dedicated to your eBranch (that has a bigger geographic footprint and can “touch” more customers?)
- Since ERP companies are challenged to provide the solutions, which companies should distributors be considering? Is there a role for marketing groups to vet some options for their members? Who should, or can, take a thought leadership role? It’s not a role for IDEA given their needed focus on continual product data improvement and hopefully supply chain efficiency.
Just some food for thought. We’ll share more from the research in the coming weeks.
2 Comments
Nice list. Other job site uses of a mobile device include:
– check the weather
– track shipments with major carriers
– use the camera as a scan tool to receive material
I must say that the survey posted above is worth pondering on bringing mobility solutions to conventional practices of contracting, engineering and construction industry. While many of the project/plant owners are searching for mobility solutions in asset management, the big issue of technology transfer from project executers to owner is still unattended which demands huge efforts on information modelling and management among suppliers-consultants-contractors and project owner.
May be, I am too late to post my reply here but meanwhile we have been working on same solutions and have our first step towards introduction of mobile solution on android OS for electrical equipment survey within plant by walk-through audit. You can backup your load survey on web application and print equipment list. We are working hard to improve and add more electrical tools to it and extend it to efficient engineering management.
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