Distributors are a critical part of most manufacturing supply networks, but their importance is often overlooked when industries plan for product compliance programs. Distributors are held accountable for compliance data they don’t own and can’t control, and are often mistakenly seen as a bottleneck in the flow of information across the product life cycle down to the end consumer. This couldn’t be further from the truth, but the way most manufacturing sectors work today makes it hard for distributors to act as a bridge between entities.
It’s time for a change.
Instead of manufacturers, OEMs, distributors, and suppliers all operating under different systems, they all need one unified approach to sharing product intelligence data. When you level the playing field, everyone spends less time and money manually chasing after data. Even better, when product intelligence is easy to share across the supply network, it protects revenue from risks that could have been identified from the very beginning.
Here’s why Assent is redefining the distributor experience to make product compliance transparent across the entire supply network.
Squeezed From All Sides
Distributors balance demands from many directions, and there’s an opportunity to streamline the process for everyone.
Customers require product material compliance information before they can buy parts and components. But distributors typically don’t own that data and are dependent on suppliers to provide those declarations. Most distributors spend more time chasing after international suppliers for data than actually helping their customers.
And suppliers don’t always understand what they’re being asked to provide or don’t have the data on hand. Distributors might need to wait for a supplier’s compliance team to verify their product against a new regulation or customer requirement, and it’s the distributor that risks losing business over it.
On top of that, data formats and requests can get messy as they travel upstream and downstream. Part numbers might not match, spreadsheets might not agree with one another, and things can get lost in abandoned inboxes. Any data that comes in needs to be validated and reconciled before it can go out to customers.
When we polled a group of distributors and manufacturers in an Assent webinar about our new Distributor Experience, they reported that the top roadblocks to success were:
- Being bombarded with customer requests they couldn’t keep up with
- Manual compliance data collection isn’t scalable
- Struggling to get data from suppliers in time to meet customer requests
- Difficulty validating data and data mismatches
There’s a time and cost impact from this crunch, which can impact the customer experience through no fault of the distributor’s own.
How to Fix Distributor Crunch: Network Intelligence
A product is only as strong as the network behind it, and that network must include distributors. Product intelligence needs to live on a single network that provides transparency and traceability between suppliers, OEMs, and distributors.
That’s why there’s a purpose-built Distributor Experience embedded within the Assent Network, the world’s largest repository of product intelligence. Over 800,000 users share 60 million declarations using Assent each year, covering more than 50 million products.
The Assent Distributor Experience is designed to automate and enhance supplier data collection and part matching, letting distributors focus on customer service. If you’re a distributor connected to the network, you can get the product intelligence you need without manual intervention in a single, simple workflow:
- Automatic matching for parts in your catalog with information that is already in the Assent Network.
- Suggested data matching for parts where human approval is required. We let you match once, and reuse forever.
- Automatic supplier outreach for parts where declarations are missing from suppliers without the need to manually trigger the request.
- Built-in compliance expertise from Assent’s Regulatory team to help educate and engage suppliers. When suppliers understand what they need to provide, and have the right templates to share data, responsiveness improves.
Even better, the Assent Distributor Experience continuously learns from your business, remembering your decisions and growing along with your entire supply network.
Learn more about the Assent Distributor Experience here. You’ll discover how you can respond to customer requests in just minutes, not weeks.
Connected Distributors Have Better Bottom Lines
By eliminating manual data management like emails, spreadsheets, and fragmented ticketing systems, distributors in the Assent Network see a 50% reduction in effort. And when regulations change and entire product lines need to be re-validated for compliance, being connected to the Assent Network ensures declarations are up to date in record time.
Boiled down, that means less time on data management and less burden on distributors to be constantly monitoring the regulatory landscape. Less chasing after data and more time focused on customer satisfaction.
When customers know they can trust the data they get from a distributor, it translates into revenue protection and a preferred vendor relationship. Less risk, less effort, less cost.
If you’re a distributor, now is the time to get connected. Contact Assent to learn how you can redefine your experience while improving customer satisfaction.
FAQ
Get answers to common questions about the Assent Distributor Experience on the Assent Network.
This information is provided for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal or regulatory advice. The information is current as of the date of publication or send. Your organization remains responsible for confirming compliance obligations.
