Received a copy of a letter from a distributor friend, that Trade Service sent to its electrical distribution customers. Interesting how a company begins to reveal itself when it needs to become competitive / visible again.
Key points from the letter include:
- “As a Trade Service customer, this does not affect you.” From this we gather that Trade Service customers will experience no interruption of service due to the ending of the data sharing relationship with IDEA.
- As previously stated in their press release, the company has over 1000 electrical distributors as customers and provides them with 2.6M skus of data. Over 1M skus are attributed / have graphics.
This bodes more questions:
- If Trade Service can guarantee uninterrupted service to its customers, how much data were they really receiving from IDEA? (probably none or very little)
- Conversely, if IDEA’s data has been interrupted, how much were they receiving from Trade Service?
- Since data, and its corresponding changes/updates, is critical to the success of a distributor (unless they are receiving information directly from manufacturers), when do current IDEA users lose access to Trade Service supplied data?
- What is IDEA doing to respond? In our posting last week we essentially asked “where are they going to get their data from?” especially since the agreement is now concluded.
- Will IDEA’s strategy require manufacturers to incur additional costs to provide data to IDEA? Will distributors have to alter their systems (and incur costs) to accept different formats? Will software providers have to change / enhance their systems to accommodate different field sizes (probably a reason to justify the next “version” and charge distributors a fee!)?
- Given that distributors use commodity codes for pricing, quotations, inventory management, report generation and more (and that their sales/purchasing history is dependent upon these codes), what is IDEA’s “go-forward strategy” and how much time will it cost distributors to adjust their systems to something else?
- And isn’t it interesting that both associations, NEMA and NAED, “co-owners” of IDEA, haven’t said a word on the issue? Very surprising, especially given their penchant for speaking about IDEA (especially NAED).
Unfortunately it appears that the data issue is creating more questions than answers are being given to.
If you receive more on this topic, from either Trade Service or IDEA, feel free to forward it to either David Gordon or Allen Ray and we’ll post it, anonymously, for all to be informed.
9 Comments
We are a small distributor in MO that looked at IDEA. It would be nice to have someday. But not now.
We do really good with our Trade data and some from manufacturers.
What interests us is selling product and making money. Not chasing make believe savings.
I wonder if this speaks to the ability and prowess of the American Capitalist way of life; the for-profit-business “get’s ur done” the bureaucratic organization stumbles, even after infusion of many dollars. I totally agree with our friend from Missouri – show me.
Now IDEA is asking me to re-code my product files.
It takes a second email to explain what the first email didn’t state.
What gives? I don’t think so.
From the guys in FL
From a very confused distributor:
This is absolutely beyond rational thinking in this business climate.
Got two emails from IDEA and we are not sure that they are getting good advice. They wanting us to remove our product file coding and replace it with a number that really is not in existence for all my product coverage.
Come on folks, we are on planet earth. Are you making this stuff up as you go along?
From a SE regional distributor:
Trade & Idea going their seperate ways is a major business event for us.
1.We have determined that Trade has the coverage.The Idea catch phrase “Gotcha covered” doesn’t do a lot for me.
2.The new futuristic coding system is not a “smart money ” spend for us in this market. There is no return.
3.And besides I’ve got customers who know our commodity structure and we talk the same language.
4. 10 years is a long time to end up with very little. Sure glad it wasn’t my money they spent.
This has to be some sort of manufacturer inspired agenda with this UN numbering. Just like SPA’s, the more confusion the better for the manufacturer.
We have a structure, that we are not going to replace.
To the manufacturers: If you don’t care to ship our orders please let us know as soon as possible….by fax if you want.
We are in a commodity contaractor business in sunny CA.
Nice try.
Cost add up!
As a CA distributor in the Bay area I find it rather interesting that an association wants to cause distributors to change their business system data so that they can make it easier to use a numbering system that they probably get a kick back on.
So in the spirit of “industry support” I thought I’d take a look.
I had my IT person check Rosetta Stone (you know the language people) to see if there was something out on the web that would teach us this new UN language. Nope he couldn’t find any language program for GS numbering system.
Then it came to me, like a shock of electricity.
We are the only country in the world that I know of that offers up medical forms in Spanish and where we speak English and deal in dollars.
Now IDEA would have us convert to a UN numbering scheme. This is a really big industry and we pretty much speak the same language.
It is not enough that manufacturers created claim backs, similar to toothpaste coupons and devised a way to force more work on the distributor, who is out selling their product; now they want to change our numbering system so that there is no way we can communicate with our customers?
Someone needs to take these associations (IDEA/NAED) aside and explain the business facts of life to them. Margins are thin, prices are rising, the housing market in our area is in the ditch, my customers are trying to ride our terms to 120 days, and manufacturers want us to speak a different language? Next they will want to make us use this UN number to talk with them when they don’t ship.
Now wasn’t IDEA originally put together to reduce cost? That is not what they are doing! My math says they are adding cost to the channel.
Your math is correct. We have wasted some money for the “Industry”.
This lastest thing IDEA sent out is an invite to a law suit.
Material Express rightfully got nailed when they did steal data and formats.Now IDEA does this in the public. You got to wonder what is going on at IDEA.
Apparently ethics means nothing to associations like NAED and IDEA.
[…] with contractors however, “stuff” (and here’s other posts from that time (IDEA with a Vision) another an article relating to the Trade Service relationship from 2008) happened and an opportunity to coalesce the industry for transactional (ERP) data was […]
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