On Money Ball, The Oakland A's and The Electrical Industry (Part 4 of 4)
Bill Floyd
Click here to read Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
This is final part of this article series that adopted the philosophy and attitude of the Money Ball Oakland A's under Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta.
This series attempts to cut through the noise and confusion of the technology world out there and lay out some strategies and offer products that get you in the game without going broke or being an IT genius. The A's accomplished what they did by not blindly following the "experts". You can do it too. But you do have to pay attention and see what really makes sense to you. Don't reinvent the wheel (or channel) if it doesn't need reinventing. But DO adopt new tools that make sense and the more complicated and changeable things become, the more you need third party partners to help shoulder the burden.
Few companies can have all the expertise, cash and foresight needed to go forward.
Strategies 3 & 4 Content Packages and NetPak (NetPricer). These are the closest things to no brainers we offer. We have about 600 distributor and other industry partners who carry the content we provide them from their Suppliers. It includes manufacturer catalogs, videos, new products, application stories, IDW information and more. It is filterable so that wholesalers choose which manufacturers appear on their site and the information always appears under the distributor's brand like it should.
Cost to the distributor is ZERO. Twenty three of our wholesalers had at least a Quarter Million views in '14. The cost to the manufacturer is pennies per view. Several of our Manufacturer Partners accumulated between 2 and 4 million content views mostly from their distributor's websites. This doesn't even speak to the efficiencies of working with one entity to place and manage content on all those websites. Unorthodox? Maybe, but a great approach to work the channel the way it was designed to be worked.
NetPak sends actual distributor pricing into his contractor's bid software 24/7. ESmarts' NetPak connects distributors to their contractors and with the click of a button prices their bids. It also analyzes the request and synchronizes each request to what his distributor carries. The benefit, more of that distributor's and his supplier's products are included in bids. Cost to the distributor $100 per month per branch for unlimited customers. The benefit is satisfying the distributor's customer's pricing requests for about .06 each and getting closer to the customer. The benefit to the supplier is more of his products included in project bids. Cost $0.00. NetPak also makes a manufacturer's IDW data available for the content to permanently import into the contractor's estimating software for future bids.
The above tool and the ones in previous articles do far more and carry more benefits than can be described here. But the common elements are a third-party partnership, dramatically lower costs and efficiencies, utilizing the channel as it was designed and thinking outside the box. Money Ball showed how creative innovation can deliver. They did it. Now it's your turn.
For both Distributors and Manufacturers relying only on your own ability to attract viewers to your website leaves an awful lot of industry eyeballs on the table. Contact us BFloyd@ElectricSmarts.com. We'll tell you more.
This is final part of this article series that adopted the philosophy and attitude of the Money Ball Oakland A's under Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta.
This series attempts to cut through the noise and confusion of the technology world out there and lay out some strategies and offer products that get you in the game without going broke or being an IT genius. The A's accomplished what they did by not blindly following the "experts". You can do it too. But you do have to pay attention and see what really makes sense to you. Don't reinvent the wheel (or channel) if it doesn't need reinventing. But DO adopt new tools that make sense and the more complicated and changeable things become, the more you need third party partners to help shoulder the burden.
Few companies can have all the expertise, cash and foresight needed to go forward.
Strategies 3 & 4 Content Packages and NetPak (NetPricer). These are the closest things to no brainers we offer. We have about 600 distributor and other industry partners who carry the content we provide them from their Suppliers. It includes manufacturer catalogs, videos, new products, application stories, IDW information and more. It is filterable so that wholesalers choose which manufacturers appear on their site and the information always appears under the distributor's brand like it should.
Cost to the distributor is ZERO. Twenty three of our wholesalers had at least a Quarter Million views in '14. The cost to the manufacturer is pennies per view. Several of our Manufacturer Partners accumulated between 2 and 4 million content views mostly from their distributor's websites. This doesn't even speak to the efficiencies of working with one entity to place and manage content on all those websites. Unorthodox? Maybe, but a great approach to work the channel the way it was designed to be worked.
NetPak sends actual distributor pricing into his contractor's bid software 24/7. ESmarts' NetPak connects distributors to their contractors and with the click of a button prices their bids. It also analyzes the request and synchronizes each request to what his distributor carries. The benefit, more of that distributor's and his supplier's products are included in bids. Cost to the distributor $100 per month per branch for unlimited customers. The benefit is satisfying the distributor's customer's pricing requests for about .06 each and getting closer to the customer. The benefit to the supplier is more of his products included in project bids. Cost $0.00. NetPak also makes a manufacturer's IDW data available for the content to permanently import into the contractor's estimating software for future bids.
The above tool and the ones in previous articles do far more and carry more benefits than can be described here. But the common elements are a third-party partnership, dramatically lower costs and efficiencies, utilizing the channel as it was designed and thinking outside the box. Money Ball showed how creative innovation can deliver. They did it. Now it's your turn.
For both Distributors and Manufacturers relying only on your own ability to attract viewers to your website leaves an awful lot of industry eyeballs on the table. Contact us BFloyd@ElectricSmarts.com. We'll tell you more.
