A Case for Quality Data: GS1 US Shares Bottom-line Results

The ability of retailers and suppliers to streamline operations, cut costs and squeeze out productivity gains from already lean operations will define who leads in this challenging economy. Synchronizing accurate data presents an ideal process for driving improvements along the entire supply chain, leading to real business opportunities for bottom-line results.

GS1 US collaborated with a leading hardlines retailer and several of its suppliers to examine opportunities in the industry. Its findings confirmed the potential for any company, regardless of size, to realize significant business impact when accurate data is synchronized, including lower freight costs, increased productivity levels, and improved asset utilization.

Both the retailer and suppliers recognized the critical need to work closely together for mutual gains, supported by GS1 US expertise and solutions that help discover untapped supply-chain savings.

Download the complete case study from GS1 US -- “Getting bottom-line results with quality data."

IDEA partners with GS1 US in developing United Nations Standard Products and Services Codes® (UNSPSC®) and through our Synchronization solution, IRD CERICOMX®.

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Forum Opening Keynote Speakers Revealed Including Gartner VP

IDEA is proud to announce the leadership panel speakers for the opening session, ‘eOptimizing Performance and Profitability’, at the 2010 IDEA E-Biz Forum in Dallas, TX on September 20th. The line-up includes: Bob Gaylord, President and CEO, IDEA; Del Nickel, IDEA Chairman; Benoit Lheureux, Research VP, Gartner; Deke Smith, Executive Director, buildingSMART Alliance National Institute of Building Sciences; John Teipen, Director of eBusiness, Graybar and Michael Johnson, Senior Marketing Analyst, Pentair Technical Products.

About Benoit Lheureux

Lheureux has 30 years of experience in the IT industry. As research VP in Gartner Research and agenda manager for the Application Infrastructure group, Lheureux focuses on three areas including application integration, middleware and B2B eCommerce.

Lheureux publishes research on the evolution of B2B integration projects, from traditional supply chain to cloud computing and SaaS integration. Additionally, Lheureux publishes research on B2B infrastructure, including all forms of B2B software and services, the evolution of EDI VANs and integration as a service, as well as the adoption of B2B standards, such as EDI, AS2 and web services.

Prior to joining Gartner, Lheureux was a senior architect for BeXcom, where he helped design collaborative applications for deployment in B2B scenarios. Before that, he worked at NCR, where, as senior consulting analyst, he helped Fortune 50 corporations architect their distributed computing solutions, as well as deploy and tune massively parallel database applications. Previously, Lheureux was an engineer and developed distributed database tools, gateways and lock managers.

Acclaimed author, lecturer and presenter, Deke Smith is the Executive Director of the buildingSMART alliance™, a council of the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) and the North American Chapter of buildingSMART International, a consortium of 53 countries. Smith is also on the Executive Committee of buildingSMART International which affords him full view of the industries business transformation. buildingSMART is focused on improving construction productivity through developing and promoting open standards supporting interoperability and improved decision making using building information models (BIM) which can eliminate significant non-value added effort or waste throughout the facilities industry. Smith is co-author of “Building Information Modeling: A Strategic Implementation Guide” published in 2009 by Wiley and regarded as the’ go to’ source for strategic thinking in the industry.

Michael Johnson began his career in information management working with Fingerhut and Coca Cola. For the past 20 years he has worked for Pentair Technical Products supporting the Hoffman brand and its sales organization where he has held positions of: Planning Analyst, Manufacturing Information Systems Coordinator, Database Specialist, and currently Senior Marketing Analyst. In addition to sales channel and segmentation support, during most of his tenure Johnson has advocated and worked to further implementations of EDI, served as company lead for IDEA’s Industry Data Warehouse (IDW), and has played a key role in implementation of various product lifecycle/pricing/categorization information systems.

Tags for this post: ebiz forum speakers pentair gartner graybar benoit lheureux national institute of building sciences deke smith

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Last Day to Register and Book Hotel for Forum

With less than three weeks to go, the Forum registration doors are closing – those not registered yet must sign-up and book their hotel room by midnight tonight to secure their seat at the industry’s eBusiness event of the year.

View the attendee list – not on the list? Be sure to register AND book your hotel now. Congratulations to Gregory Tabor of Hagemeyer NA / Sonepar US, our Forum raffle winner of one free hotel night!

A preview of the eBusiness expertise that will be shared during the event:

Lunch Session: An Information-Driven Approach to Managing Multiple Data Streams * RECENTLY ADDED! -- Rich Brooks, BURNDY

September 21, 12:05 PM - 12:55 PM

In today's fast-paced economy, distributors are demanding more qualified and timely product information from their manufacturers. Working with bad or outdated data impacts costs, time, productivity and sales. But today, it’s not just about having better pricing and product data. It’s also about the ability to correlate that information to the appropriate images and digital assets—and to fully leverage that information for business improvement. Rich Brooks, e-business development manager for BURNDY, will discuss the challenges manufacturers face in providing information from multiple data streams and how BURNDY is addressing these obstacles. He’ll describe the role that data governance and data quality are playing in sales and marketing, and why MDM and data syndication have now become strategic imperatives for BURNDY.

Partnering with Partners Leads to Success -- Matthew Doornbos, Kendall Electric; George Droder, Erico; Lawrence Laake and Vicki Stokes, Rockwell Automation

September 21st, 4:00 PM - 4:50 PM

An electronic trading partner relationship provides a vehicle for sending data from one partner's system to another, irrespective of the challenges the data may present. It is only through collaborative partnerships that data and implementation challenges are overcome, leading to long term trading success. The road to integration success relies on a constant dialog in both directions. Join us as we discuss lessons learned, best practices, future integration opportunities, and trends from two perspectives --- the channel distributor and the supply chain manufacturer.

Graybar’s eChannel Defined -- John Teipen, Graybar

September 22nd,10:15 AM - 11:05 AM

Products and services sold through distribution today are rapidly increasing in sophistication and complexity. As a result, the information needed by distributor salespeople to sell these products and the information required by customers to purchase these products, has never been more critical or comprehensive. Add to that the diversity and definition of "customers", their systems and procurement methods, and the opportunity for a distributor's success may well hinge upon the accuracy, breadth and depth of data (product information) available to the customer. Having information that the customer desires easily available when they want it can appear almost insurmountable--even to the most sophisticated distributors. The sourcing of product data (supply side) and presentation of this information (demand side) is a new role that distributors face today and is one that requires a thorough understanding of the channel. Listen as Graybar discusses the obstacles they have faced and hear how they are successfully meeting those challenges.

Check out more by viewing the 2010 schedule.

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Congratulations to tED Magazine’s "Best of the Best Overall" Marketing Award Winners: Van Meter Industrial and Legrand/Pass & Seymour

The 2010 tED Magazine “Best of the Best” marketing awards were presented at a reception hosted by the magazine during the NAED AdVenture Electrical Marketing Conference in Chicago on August 16. Congratulations to IDEA customers, Van Meter Industrial and Legrand/Pass & Seymour, for taking the “Best of the Best Overall” award as well as the winners of the other categories.

The awards recognize the best electrical marketing campaigns fielded in 2009. More than 360 entries were received this year, all of which were on display at the meeting. Categories are split by sales volume to ensure that competition is fair and occurs between like-sized firms.

Of the 59 separate category awards presented, only two—one distributor and one manufacturer—were selected to represent this year’s overall best marketing practices in the electrical distribution industry. Distributor Van Meter Industrial received the “Best of the Best Overall” distributor award, and Legrand/Pass & Seymour took the “Best of the Best Overall” manufacturer award.

In the Distributors $25 to $200 Million category, Van Meter Industrial received two “Best of the Best" awards for its entries in the Public Relations/Community Outreach and Brand Awareness categories. In the Manufacturer Over $250 Million category, Legrand/Pass & Seymour received two awards for its entries in the Direct Promotion & Product Launch categories.

Van Meter Industrial was also recognized as the 2008 distributor winner of the Richard Buzun Award for Leadership and Innovation in eCommerce at the IDEA E-Biz Forum.

View all of the 2010 “Best of the Best” winners and take a look at their work. Congratulations to all!

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New B2B eCommerce and Synchronization Customers

IDEA welcomes one new IDX and 15 new IRD CERICOMX® customers. Read more about these companies and how you can begin trading with them electronically to expand your business.

New IDX Customer

Winkle Electric Company of Youngstown, OH became an Industry Data Exchange (IDX) customer on August 31, 2010. Winkle Electric offers extensive electrical supply, high-tech automation, integrated services, eco-solutions, and custom control. They will be taking advantage of the cost savings and reliability of IDX to exchange B2B documents. Winkle is a proud member of A-D. Find out more at www.winkle.com.  

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 15 suppliers:

• Your Baby Can, LLC
• Officemate International Corp. 
• Mister Landscaper , Inc
• Lights of America
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• JVM Sales Corp 
• Johnson Products Company 
• Huntwise, Inc 
• Vergos International Product 
• Sports Design & Development
• Crystal Products, Co 
• United Plastics Corp
• KEE Action Sports
• Splash Products, Inc 

These companies will be trained to use IRD CERICOMX®, an online catalog that suppliers use to register product data with the GS1 Registry® and GDSN via the 1SYNC Data Pool. Suppliers also use this solution to publish product data to demand partners including retailers like Lowe’s and Walmart.

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