IDEA Announces That the New IDEA Connector Platform is Live
May 1, 2020
The Industry Data Exchange Association (IDEA) is excited to announce the new IDEA Connector data syndication platform is live, and all customers have been successfully migrated from the legacy IDW system. IDEA Connector is a Master Data Management (MDM) platform that enables manufacturers and distributors to share trusted electrical product content, eCommerce attribution, and pricing information, ensuring an efficient and secure supply chain process.
The IDEA Connector provides the ability to receive all available product content from manufacturers in a variety of formats. In addition to delivering a user-friendly interface to maintain product information, users have access to a graphical mapping tool to generate any required product and pricing extracts. The IDEA Connector data model fully supports the current ETIM 7.0 classification and is ready for ETIM 8.0 and eCl@ss, extending the Standards-based model used today for validation and normalization of product information.
Users can look forward to seeing IDEA Connector updates featuring many of the stateof-the-art technologies the platform can provide. This roadmap includes API integration, microservices, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), language translation, and global syndication.
The electrical industry is rapidly adopting IDEA Connector. In less than a week, IDEA Connector has imported more than 1,500 product and pricing files, as well as exported over 25 million product attributes to distributors from a portfolio of 2.5+ million products and 4+ million digital assets, including 360-degree images and video installation instructions.
The new IDEA Connector will improve operational efficiencies among trading partners and their ultimate customers. Feedback from users of the new platform regarding its flexibility has been very positive: “It works great. I was able to easily double-check our authorizations, do another extract, look up products, suppliers, check out contacts, and make sure our branches are loaded correctly,” said Nick Becker from Standard Electric Supply Company.
The IDEA Client Solutions Team is available to answer and address any questions or concerns regarding IDEA Connector. They can be reached at either ideaclientsolutions@idea4industry.com or 866-479-0484.
