What Changes, What Doesn’t, and What’s Next
Thirty years ago, electrical procurement looked very different. Purchase orders traveled by fax and digital procurement was in its infancy. The sophisticated data analytics and connected systems businesses rely on today were still years away.
In 1996, one challenge was already becoming increasingly important: large, multi-location organizations wanted a better way to manage their electrical purchasing. They wanted to consolidate spend, reduce the complexity of managing a large vendor base and create greater consistency across their organizations without losing the local distributor relationships and service their individual facilities depended on.
That challenge led to the creation of VANTAGE Electrical Group and thirty years later, nearly everything about the technology behind electrical procurement has changed. The importance of strong relationships, reliable service and finding better ways to create value has not.
It Started With a Different Approach
The original VANTAGE concept brought regional electrical distributors together through a coordinated network, allowing customers to maintain access to strong local distributors while gaining the centralized point of contact needed to manage electrical purchasing across multiple locations.
It was a different approach to a growing problem. Rather than asking customers to choose between local support and national coordination, VANTAGE created a model designed to provide both. That foundation continues to shape the company today.
“The tools we use today would have been impossible to imagine 30 years ago, but the reason VANTAGE exists really hasn’t changed. Our job is to bring the right people and information together, make a complex process easier and create value for everyone involved.” – LYNN FERGUSON, PRESIDENT & CEO
From Fax Machines to Connected Procurement
Perhaps nothing illustrates 30 years of change quite like the way a purchase order moves through VANTAGE. In 1996, the fax machine was an essential piece of the order-processing operation. Today, EDI and cXML are among the primary methods used to process purchase orders through the VANTAGE platform. Approximately 500,000 transactions are now handled through the system, with a transaction occurring roughly every 15 seconds.
Technology hasn’t simply made the same processes faster and it has changed what is possible.
Over the years, VANTAGE has expanded beyond centralized MRO purchasing and invoicing to support areas including purchase order and quote routing, ERP integration, inventory consolidation, national pricing coordination and increasingly sophisticated data analytics. Information that once documented a transaction can now help identify an opportunity.
The Evolution of Data
That transformation is particularly evident in reporting. VANTAGE’s early reporting capabilities provided customers with clean, organized transactional information that could be downloaded and analyzed.
Today, reporting has evolved into dynamic dashboards and deeper analytics designed to help customers and distributors better understand purchasing activity, identify trends and uncover opportunities within their data, and the next evolution is already underway.
VANTAGE is exploring deeper plant- and location-specific analysis, AI-supported analytics, automatic opportunity alerts and master data management capabilities designed to bring greater clarity to parts data across facilities and distributors. The objective isn’t simply to collect more information. It’s to make the information already available more useful.
Some Things Shouldn’t Change
Technology has transformed the electrical industry, but 30 years have also reinforced the importance of something decidedly less technical: relationships.
VANTAGE operates at the intersection of customers, distributors and manufacturers. Making that model work requires more than systems and transactions. It requires trust between the organizations involved.
For customers, that means maintaining access to knowledgeable distributors who understand their facilities and local markets.
For distributors, it means being part of a network that creates opportunities to support customers across a much larger footprint.
For manufacturers, it creates greater visibility into the channel and the customers ultimately using their products.
And for VANTAGE, it means continuing to serve as the connection between them.
“You can build better systems and introduce new technology, but this business still comes down to people delivering for one another. The relationships across our customers, distributors, manufacturers and our own team are what allow the entire model to work.” -TODD ALTPETER, COO
Thirty Years Is Really About the People
A 30-year anniversary naturally invites a company to look at how much has changed, but longevity isn’t created by technology alone.
It’s created by people who continue to adapt, solve problems and show up for customers and partners year after year. Some members of the VANTAGE team have spent a significant portion of their careers helping the company grow and evolve. Long-standing relationships across its customer and distributor network have also provided continuity through decades of changes in technology, manufacturing, supply chains and the electrical industry itself.
Those relationships have helped shape what VANTAGE has become and they will also help shape what comes next.
The Next 30 Years
Predicting what electrical procurement will look like three decades from now would be difficult. Thirty years ago, processing purchase orders by fax was normal. Today, organizations are discussing artificial intelligence, automated analytics, connected procurement systems and increasingly sophisticated ways of using data to make decisions.
The technology will continue to change and customer expectations will change with it. What shouldn’t change is the willingness to keep improving.
“I’m incredibly proud of what this organization has built over the past 30 years, but I’m even more excited about where we’re going. We have an opportunity to take everything VANTAGE has learned about electrical procurement, distribution and data and use it to create even more value across the channel. We’re honoring the foundation that got us here while continuing to ask what we can do better.” – LYNN FERGUSON, PRESIDENT & CEO
Thirty years after VANTAGE began, the original idea still holds true: bring strong partners together, simplify complexity and find better ways to serve the electrical industry. The tools, scale, and possibilities are all different, but the foundation remains. Here’s to 30 years of partnerships, progress and finding a better way forward.