November 14, 2023 (St. Louis) — The Marketing Research and Insight Excellence Awards has named Erika TenEyck, NAED’s Director of Business Intelligence Programs and Insights, as its Researcher of the Year (End Client). The Researcher of the Year award recognizes “a trailblazer making a significant difference in the overall promotion of market research as well as the performance of their organization." Erika was selected for this prestigious award for her path-breaking work in leading NAED’s Journey Map of Product Data study. As the industry continues to evolve with new technologies and business models to meet customer expectations, product data must also align with this transition.
“It’s an honor to win this award and appreciate Gold Research, especially Nitin Sharma and Greg Tucker, and the team at Quirk’s,” TenEyck said. “ However, I cannot take sole credit since the study could not have happened without NAED members. I’d like to thank our amazing task force whose dedication and input proved invaluable, the support of the NAED Foundation Board of Directors, and the NAED distributors and manufacturers who provided a better understanding of roles, processes, and suggested best practices. I share this award with everyone involved and am grateful for their commitment to helping solve ongoing industry issues together. Thanks to their contributions, we can now better pinpoint opportunities to streamline and improve processes related to product data.”
The results of the study not only provided a highly informative journey map but also revealed that the current state costs the industry billions—a minimum of $2 billion—due to inefficiencies.
“The importance of quality product data has only grown as business practices have increasingly centered around online information and processes,” TenEyck added. “It was so interesting to outline each step of and visualize the entire process from beginning to end for the industry. In doing so, we not only learned so much from the people who work with product data but also from the friction points that can lead to inefficiencies and higher costs in productivity. The study is the first step to help address some of those gaps and bring into the spotlight the power of product data for the industry. Complete, clean, and updated information benefits everyone and can positively impact all aspects of the supply chain.”
This study conducted with Gold Research brought to light the importance of precise product data and underscored its importance in members gaining operational efficiency, enhancing customer experiences, and increasing sales. The impact of the “Journey Map of Product Data” is significant.
“NAED is fortunate to have manufacturers, distributors, and allied partners who have dedicated numerous resources to improve those processes, and their input served as a great starting point to discuss next steps. We look forward to sharing more on the impact of product data with the follow-up study with Gold Research that will be released shortly.”
The Marketing Research and Insight Excellence Awards are the industry’s most respected marketing research awards and are open to researchers worldwide.
The NAED Journey Map of Product Data research is available to NAED members for free.
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF ELECTRICAL DISTRIBUTORS