September 29, 2011 – IDEA—a business-to-business (B2B) technology service provider “owned by the electrical industry”—recognized Border States Electric and Cooper Industries as the distributor and manufacturer recipients, respectively, of the 5th annual Richard Buzun Award for Leadership and Innovation in eCommerce.

“The 2011 winners invested in the future by exploring and adopting more productive ways of conducting business with their trading partners,” said Bob Gaylord, president and CEO of IDEA during the IDEA E-Biz Forum in St. Louis, Mo. “They are leveraging the outputs developed by the industry to generate positive outcomes for their companies, which has a trickle down affect on the entire industry. Especially since they both share some of the secrets behind their success to help everyone else succeed.”

Greg Thrall, SVP operations for Border States and Scott Feldbush, director of EBS shared services for Cooper Industries, accepted the awards on behalf of the winning companies.

“It validates our dedication to building catalogue content and providing resources and examples to our manufacturers as encouragement for their eCommerce programs,” said Thrall of the award. “By forging close relationships with our manufacturer partners and supporting IDEA initiatives and quality product content, we hope to provide starting points for everyone to contribute clean, standardized data and keep the links within the supply chain strong and efficient.”

“Receiving the Richard Buzun Award is extremely exciting for Cooper Industries. It recognizes the company’s focus and dedication to reducing the cost of business through data synchronization with our business partners. We look forward to our continued involvement with IDEA and our support of industry standards to improve our business relationships through efficient, harmonized transactions with our partners,” said Feldbush.

The Richard Buzun Award was introduced in 2007 to recognize manufacturer and distributor companies that demonstrate leadership by implementing and promoting successful eCommerce programs throughout the electrical industry. The award is named after the late Richard Buzun, former IDEA chair, and former president and CEO of Siemens Energy & Automation Inc.