May 6, 2013 – General Cable has announced it has reached IDEA’s (The Industry Data Exchange Association’s) Platinum Band, describing it as the “most prestigious level of IDEA’s Bands of Excellence program”.

“General Cable has taken a leadership role, and it is appropriate that they be recognized. They are working exceptionally hard to adapt to changing customer expectations, and I’ve been extremely impressed with the way they responded to this challenge,” said Bob Gaylord, president and CEO, IDEA.

Owned by the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) and the National Association of Electrical Distributors (NAED), IDEA established this program to recognize manufacturers for providing exceptional marketing support to its trading partners.

The Bands of Excellence rating system measures each manufacturer’s completion percentage for providing robust product marketing content to distributors through the Industry Data Warehouse (IDW). Specification documents, attributes, images, and descriptions all must be populated with product data for 75%-100% of a manufacturer’s stock products to achieve the Platinum level status. Once this marketing information is populated in the IDW, distributors can download the information and share it with their customers using web storefronts, print catalogues and other media.

“Reaching IDEA’s Platinum Band of Excellence has been a high priority with General Cable,” said Greg Lampert, General Cable’s EVP, president and CEO, The Americas. “We are always looking for new ways to provide value and efficiencies for our electrical distribution partners and IDW has provided us with a robust e-business tool to accomplish this goal.”