This Week in IDEA | July 11, 2013

IDEA Announces New IDW Bands of Excellence Rating Criteria

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IDEA, with support from owners NAED and NEMA, introduced the IDW Bands of Excellence program last summer as part of a continuous effort to populate the Industry Data Warehouse (IDW) with more robust marketing content. Since then, this program has been highly successful in recognizing manufacturers for excellence in providing critical marketing content to their distributor partners through the IDW. In fact, the program has resulted in more than a tenfold increase in IDW marketing content.

Accurate and timely marketing content in the IDW helps distributors differentiate and promote manufacturers’ products and fuels distributor web storefronts, changing the way buyers research and find products. With the proliferation of B2B eCommerce websites, and the associated demand from end users, NAED has asked IDEA to introduce more rigorous banding levels that are aligned with NAED’s Supplier Scorecards.

Moving forward, the Bands of Excellence rating system will provide increased visibility for those manufacturers providing the SAID elements (spec sheets, attributes, images, descriptions) for 85-100% of their stock products.

The new IDW Bands of Excellence rating metrics will be:

• Platinum: 100% stock products in the IDW populated with all SAID elements

• Gold: 95-99% stock products in the IDW populated with all SAID elements

• Silver: 90-94% stock products in the IDW populated with all SAID elements

• Bronze: 85-89% stock products in the IDW populated with all SAID elements

Additionally, the new banding criteria will have more stringent requirements for attribute population: each stock product must have a minimum of five attributes or 30% of available attributes populated (whichever is less). One of those attributes must be Brand, which is the name customers typically use to search for products in a web store.

Along with the SAID elements, distributors are asking for additional marketing content that enables an enhanced web experience (e.g. videos, material safety data sheets (MSDS), RoHS compliance information). Additional rigor will be added to the banding criteria as end user needs evolve.

IDEA will publically recognize the manufacturers that have achieved these new banding levels at the end of July.

Manufacturers should contact their Data Quality Analyst at IDEA for information on how to sustain their current band or improve their banding status before these updates are published.

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