This Week in IDEA | July 03, 2007

New IDEA Customer: H. Schacht Electrical Supply, Inc.

H. Schacht Electrical Supply, a distributor from Brooklyn, NY, became an IDEA customer on June 29, 2007. H. Schacht Electrical Supply specializes in wholesale electrical equipment and supplies. They will be taking advantage of the cost saving features and reliability of the Industry Data Exchange (IDX2), Welcome Aboard! 

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New IRD/CERICOMX® Customers

IDEA, a 1SYNC Data Pool On-Board Solution (OBS) partner, implements suppliers that subscribe to the 1SYNC data pool using IDEA's IRD CERICOMX application. IDEA was recently assigned the following four suppliers:

- Shakespeare Flowers
- National Fruit Product, Inc.
- InConcept USA
- Kash N Gold

These companies will be trained to use IRD CERICOMX®, an IDEA branded product for supporting and uploading supplier product information into the GS1 Registry® and GDSN via the 1SYNC Data Pool.

If you would like to learn more about the CERICOMX® product, please contact , IDEA IRD Product Manager, at ; or , IRD Sales Manager, at .

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Thomas & Betts: Sponsor of Electro E-Biz Forum 2007

The Electro E-Biz Forum 2007 Committee would like to thank Thomas & Betts for their Silver Level Sponsorship.

Thomas & Betts, established in 1898, supplies over 70% of the items used in a typical electrical application - be it commercial, industrial or residential construction or equipment maintenance and repair or original equipment manufacturing. They also provide commercial heating and ventilation products. Visit the Thomas & Betts Website.

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No Passport? No Problem: New Travel Accommodation allows you to travel to Canada for the Electro E-Biz Forum 2007

Due to the longer than expected processing times for passport applications, the federal government is allowing U.S. citizens traveling to Canada who have applied for, but not yet received passports, to re-enter the United States by air by presentation of a government issued photo ID and Department of State official proof of application for a passport through September 30, 2007. Contact your airline in advance for specific entry requirements.

Read the Travel Accommodation announced June 8, 2007 or Check the status of your passport application.

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Beating the BI Blues

Business Information – many companies approach this subject from the wrong angle, leading to a lot of wasted effort. In fact, companies spend more than 70% of time, energy and money dedicated to BI on people and process issues. The mistake a lot of companies make is buying technology with the hopes that it will apply to their business objective. Companies should start by defining the business objective(s), then the people, metrics and processes that support the objective(s).

One of the key obstacles a company faces when constructing an efficient BI system is the lack of support from senior management. Additionally, many companies approach this issue with the sole objective to fix or clean up the data. Cleaning or fixing up data is not a business objective but that is how many companies drive their business information efforts. As a result, the organization spends its time responding to tactical requirements, instead of driving business objectives.

It is important to have a team to bridge the divide between IT and business objectives. In today’s business environment most organizations are facing an information explosion but don’t have a management strategy in place.

Best practices:

1. 
   
2. Get an Executive to sponsor your information management efforts. Consider the organizational structure so you are able to adapt to changing business priorities.
3. Define the objectives necessary to deliver the business strategy. Don’t just get mired in cleaning up the data. Construct your plan to improve on current processes that play into achieving the objectives.
4. Compare your plan with current initiatives, tools and technologies. The plan should strike a balance between strategic perspective and tactical requirements. It should be flexible enough to evolve over the next 8-10 years.

This is why

Between now and 2012 organizations will experience a threefold increase in data, content and quality issues.

By: Mike Rioux, President, IDEA

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Did You Know? IDW Hot Fact

Attention Manufacturers:
If you perform an item update and flag the new item as “A” for active and the old item as “O” for obsolete, the obsolete item is not deleted from the IDW. Instead, it creates two records with different GTIN’s (previously called UPC’s) and the same Catalog Number. Flagging an item as obsolete simply alerts distributors of an update and helps them keep track of the product life cycle. Distributors need the obsolete items for inventory, sales history, contracts and returns tied to previous loaded data.

The obsolete items stay in the IDW until the manufacturer changes the Item Status code to something else, such as a “D”. If there are duplicates, either duplicate GTIN or duplicate Catalog numbers, it can cause a “crash” of results in the unsuspecting distributors’ business system. Make sure to help out your customers by removing duplicated GTIN’s and catalog numbers. This will prevent distributors from wasting their time figuring out what went wrong and give them more time to sell your products.

Contact , IDW Data Content Manager, at to make sure you don’t have any duplicate time killers in the IDW.

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