ASA's Center for Advancing Technology continues to offer relevant, important services to our industry, and even has a few new ones waiting in the wings. Our flagship service, the IDB Industry Database, continues to gain ground with distributors and manufacturers in both the PHCP and HVAC/R sectors.

Likewise, we have realized additional Catalog Builder sales, some of these coincidentally generating new memberships for ASA. CAT's new, web-based EDI service, Translink, is rapidly becoming the number one choice in the industry.

Our program with HARDI, the association for HVACR distributors and manufacturers, continues to grow. Three new services being looked at include MSDS (HazMat) compliance, online video conferencing and training, and a management level operations and logistics seminar.

IDB Industry Database Update

The IDB Industry Database added nine new distributors during the 1st quarter, including Coburn Supply, Consolidated Supply (Oregon), D & J Distributors, MDM Supply, Milford Supply Company, Modern Supply, Northeastern Supply, Snow & Jones, and The Behler-Young Company.

We continue to add manufacturers into the database as well, especially in the HVAC/R sector. More than 60 firms have expressed interest in having their products added to the IDB, 8 manufacturers are currently scheduled to send data in, and 6 are already in-house being integrated into the database. By the end of the 2nd quarter, the IDB should surpass 1.5 million products available!

EDI - AnsiNet and Translink

Our EDI programs are nearing a milestone; we are closing in on our 300th client to sign with CAT for EDI! Two programs are now offered: the traditional network-based AnsiNet, and the web-based Translink. The first quarter sales recorded 11 new firms joining the ranks of satisfied users of CAT's Translink service.

To find out about how these and other CAT services can help your company reduce costs and increase profits using technology, contact Kevin Price, the CAT Director, at 1-800-608-7308 or via email at kprice@asa.net.