Supplier newsletter –May 22

RS Group has set our ESG 2030 action plan to support a more sustainable and inclusive world.

We are working to bring our people, customers, suppliers and communities together to accelerate our positive impact and deliver our purpose – “making amazing happen for a better world”.

RS Group is at the heart of the global industrial and electronics sector and we want to continue to progress and become recognised as a leader within the sustainability space.

We know through research that our customers view sustainability as one of their top three business agendas and are seeking business partners who can support their ESG agendas and goals.

We are committed to being first choice for our customers and our suppliers by implementing standards and creating guidelines for our sustainable product offering.

We will do this is by collaborating with our suppliers to market their sustainable products and provide value-added services to their end customers.

We would like to work with you to bring to life your sustainable products and services solution offers, and to do so we must collect the appropriate information around your products that supports their sustainable credentials – energy efficiency standards, sustainability certifications, and product lifecycle assessments to name just a few. This will enable us to expose, through our “Marketing for a better world” campaign, products that can be linked to sustainability through science and fact-based criteria

RS Group understands that by collectively working with our suppliers we all demonstrate the right behaviours for the business and society. We are taking the world’s ESG challenges seriously and engaging with actions to help create impact.

RS Group can share the efforts that you as a supplier are making to vital ESG challenges through our wide-reaching multi-channel sales platforms to the wide breadth of our customer base.

We are taking action to ensure the highest ethical and environmental standards are in place throughout our business and global value chains. To be successful we will need your support on the following:

• Sign our Ethical Trading Policy
• Where appropriate sign our Conflict Minerals Policy
• Engage and sign up to the EcoVadis programmes
• Initiate and engage with EcoVadis improvement plans
• Set science-based carbon reduction goals
• Work to improve packaging designs and materials used.

We see this as a collaborative process over the next 12- 24 month as we work together to make amazing happen for our customer and your end users.

Your regular contacts will share what we are asking in more detail soon. Thank you for helping us make amazing happen for a better world.

We’re always trying to think of new and innovative ways to create a great experience for our customers to do business with us, wherever they are in the world, including easier ways to choose products and bring our suppliers’ brands to life.

With this in mind, we have been looking at ways that we can enhance our language accuracy capabilities for our customers and have developed a system powered with cutting-edge technology using AI and machine learning technology.

How does it work?

We have merged the creativity of expert human linguists with the precision of AI technology. This hybrid human-machine approach is boosted by a human augmented language operating system, which has a neural machine translation engine that has been learning from quality linguistic data, to create languages in the desired style. The language creation will continuously improve with human feedback, fed into an interactive learning loop.

What are the benefits?

That all sounds great, but what does that mean for our customers and for you, our suppliers?

These enhanced language capabilities are live in 6 local markets and are delivering significant customer benefits now:

• Our customers are presented with accurate product information in their local language, so that they can confidently place an order for what they need.
• The speed to global markets for your products is even quicker, created in the local language, with our language production level growing by 300%, as opposed to the traditional method.

Talking to our customers in their local language, ensuring that they can order in confidence, helps us build better relationships and trust in RS and your brands.

Technology and innovation play an important part in giving us this competitive edge with our language system and we will continuously look to improve, putting you and our customers first.

If you have any language needs or queries that you’d like to discuss with us, please do not hesitate to contact the Localisation team at RCentral.TranslationTeam@rs-components.com.

RS Japan has always been known as an electronics distributor within the Japanese market. Following an in-depth review in 2020, we took the opportunity to create a comprehensive strategy to move forward into the extensive industrial market, supporting our industrial customers, working with our local and global suppliers in this sector.

Using our strength already built up in electronics, coupled with our global presence in Automation and Control, we realised that we had a great offer that could best serve those customers in the IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) sector – with a particular focus on factory automation in the semiconductor machinery, automotive machinery and food & beverage equipment sectors.

Using this combined end-to-end approach and with our commercial functions within RS Japan and our suppliers all focussed on the same targets, we have seen exponential growth in this area, especially in Automation & Control (+250%). The result has also been equally impressive for our local and global suppliers such as Omron, TDK-Lambda, Cosel, Panasonic, Schneider, Phoenix Contact, Siemens and ABB.

This also created a knock-on effect in the region’s electronics business, which has seen triple digit growth, particularly in industrial connectors, with pull-through sales in our Test & Measurement and Tools & Consumables categories.

These results have not only strengthened our brand positioning in the region but have firmly acknowledged our presence as a distributor to support our industrial customers in the IIoT and factory automation space.

This is a great opportunity for RS Japan, working with our suppliers to build on the growth that has started and utilise our electronics legacy to expand the industrial business.

RS is the proud recipient of the 2022 Belden EMEA Distributor Value Award. The criteria for this are based on one of Belden’s six core values - ‘continuous improvement is our way of life’ - which looks for improvement in quality, delivery and cost while eliminating waste.

An annual award, each year Belden’s sales teams nominate a partner, with the winners being selected by the Belden Partner Alliance Committee. Speaking on why RS won the award, a spokesperson from Belden said: “RS are actively engaged and working with us on several select growth programs. They are highly focused on improving practices such as local sales enablement, engagement training, content enrichment, and a UK pilot on a Cables Product Selector. Eliminating waste with lean practices and continuously improving experiences.”

Rash Kelf, Senior Category Manager at RS, adds: “We are delighted at having won the award, and improving our collaboration across EMEA has been key. A lot of work has gone into building strong relationships across EMEA, and at a local market level. Well done to all involved from both businesses - content enrichment, inventory, and local markets."

Our Supplier Content Programmes are a new concept, which have driven strong results over the last year. Designed to capture customer demand in the market, using SEO principles and research, we use a brand perspective to support customers in their purchasing and navigation decisions.

Preston Taylor, Head of Supplier Content Programmes, said: “Our programmes are unique to each supplier, providing growth and showing great success in the activities we work on. We are proud to be working with Belden, using their knowledge, with a programme lead experienced in content enrichment, to scope out a strategy to improve their brand visibility and showcase their expertise in their field. It’s an honour to have won this award, the theme of which, really encompasses the goal of our programmes, we strive to continuously improve how we support our brands, our customers and our online content, whilst thinking outside of the box, striving for ‘the new & different’.”

Belden is a global supplier to RS that designs, manufactures and markets a portfolio of networking, security and connectivity technologies and products.

Did you know it’s even easier to launch more of your products with us?

Your products could be live on our channels, accelerating your sales growth, even quicker than ever!

How is that possible?

By the power of product data, that’s how.

We’re looking to host millions of your products across our e-commerce channels by investing heavily into advancing our digital capabilities - changing our internal processes - so that we can optimise your product offering and get your products in front of customers even faster.

What do you need to do?

Automated product data sharing.

You only need to change the way that you share your product data with us – it’s that simple.

No more filling in time-consuming spreadsheets – just provide us with product data in whatever format your system provides – our team can take it from there and do the rest.

By sending us your product data in this way we can make your product live on our channels four times faster than the laborious spreadsheet process – something we’re looking to accelerate even further, as we aim to have products live within 24 hours.

Hundreds of our suppliers are already working with us, using automated product sharing, with thousands of lines being launched each month, generating increased revenue and delighting our customers with the breadth of offer they can choose from.

We’re looking to work with all our suppliers in this way, offering you a timesaving, flexible way to unlock your revenue potential and launch your products, using our e-commerce capabilities.

Automated product data sharing is only the first step of this journey, with data and Insight providing rich opportunities for the future of our businesses.

So why wait?

Please reach out to your Supplier Manager to find out more of how data acquisition can help you.