Why Part Data Integrations Enhance Sales of Electronic Components
The Pain Points
No matter what side of that process that you’re on, there are pain points. One person may experience the pain and feel the pressure of:
- Finding the data for the parts in question
- Formatting the data how your trading partners require it
- Transmitting the data to them using the method that they specify
- Respond to errors and missing data
- Repeat all over again for the next stocking package
And then, someone on the other side is always experiencing the mirror image of that pain. It’s a process that only scales by adding more people to both sides, which is very inefficient. These valuable resources could be utilized more effectively to drive other business-critical functions.
While it is generally agreed that there must be a better way, significant technical hurdles exist that prevent full automation of the process. Automating data extraction from a PIM, transforming the format, and loading it to an external system using a scheduled process are just some of the steps required to scale the syndication or intake of component data.
The Challenges in Automating for Scale
As implied earlier, the way to alleviate the pain points is to respond with automation. The idea is to identify the source of truth where the relevant data is stored. Even here, there can be difficulty; rarely is there only one source of truth for all part data.
Parametrics fit nicely in a PIM, but other media, like images, are held in DAM. An automated system would have to connect to and join them in a single data model. And that speaks nothing of compliance data which is typically held in yet another system of record in yet another format.
Managing and organizing data is only one aspect of the challenge. The next step is to ensure the data is transferred to the appropriate location. However, depending on the recipient, the information may be in a variety of formats and may have different naming conventions.
While this may not be an issue for a few partners, it can become problematic when dealing with numerous partners who all have distinct requirements.
Finally, keeping the data up-to-date becomes the next hurdle. Knowing when and how often to update the data for each of the partners becomes a complex task. In an automated setup, this is as simple as setting the ETL (extract, transform, and load) process to run on a predetermined schedule and simply monitoring that the task runs as expected.
A Data Automation Partner
Orbweaver has been a partner to manufacturers and distributors of electronic components since its beginnings. Thanks to our electronics industry and big data experience, we solve these automation challenges efficiently.
An effective syndication or automation system implementation should easily connect to data sources, know how to transform the data load, and know where to drop it off. Our experience with large-scale data automation systems and with leading industry suppliers enables us to deliver solutions with speed and scale.
An Example
A component distributor partnered with Orbweaver to streamline the supplier data intake process by managing the large volume of data from over 50 different component manufacturers.
These manufacturers used various exchange methods such as API, SFTP, S3, E-Mail, or UI uploads to send data in different formats, including CSV, XLS, ZIP, or JSON. Each data set contained tens of thousands of parts, and each had its own schedule. Manufacturers sent data on a daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis.
The distributor used to spend weeks to process data by reformatting it, correcting errors, and checking for omissions. However, after collaborating with Orbweaver’s data experts, the distributor team is now able to process large files with over 100,000 parts in minutes using Orbweaver’s DataHub platform and confidently load this data into their Product Information Management (PIM) system.
