Glenn Jarrett, Global Head of Product Marketing at RS Components raises a toast as the company celebrates 75 years of business success achieved through sustained high service level customer support, and a commitment to innovation which has led to award-winning eCommerce initiatives
RS Components is celebrating 75 years in business this September. From humble beginnings in a small London garage in 1937, RS has grown into a successful multinational organisation by retaining its focus on high service level customer support while evolving into a multi-channel business with eCommerce at its heart.
Over the last 75 years, RS has transformed itself from a UK company into a global business. With direct operations in 30 countries and distributors in a further 37 markets, RS is the number one high service distributor across Europe and the Asia Pacific region. The company’s 16 distribution centres located worldwide enable it to provide high service levels to over one million customers.
The company’s success is a direct result of its ability to embrace change, adapting to the needs of the market and its customers. Together with its broad product range of more than 550,000 products, eCommerce has become a major driver of the company’s growth, allowing it to have a long-term, multi-channel relationship with its customers.
Advanced eCommerce strategy
Recently, the distributor has transformed its customers’ online experience with the introduction of eProcurement systems, a Live Chat service in 12 markets, electronics design tools and one of the most advanced transactional websites in the distribution sector.
With eCommerce now firmly rooted at the heart of RS’ business, the development of online resources to optimise the customer journey continues to be a key focus. The company’s research has shown that quality of content is critical, and customers want to complete the component ordering process as quickly and simply as possible to free up their time for designing, building and testing products.
In response, RS has introduced a new online linecard (www.rs-compo nents.com/linecard) to ease accessibility to RS’ full range of 550,000 electronics and maintenance products, providing customers with a new way to navigate by brand through the extensive list of manufacturers and products available for same-day despatch from its stock.
The linecard has been developed to enhance the online find and buy experience for engineers and purchasing professionals across the globe. Constantly updated with the latest product introductions, customers are able to locate products by brand faster, reducing the time between search and order.
The company has also recently upgraded the functionality of its online quote system, which enables customers to upload a spreadsheet bill of material (BOM) and match products according to the part descriptions, as well as to the distributors’ or manufacturer’s part number. In addition, the new service also allows customers to create their own list of parts, without the need for uploading a spreadsheet.
Speed and simplicity are vital elements in the ordering process and the company is implementing further initiatives to streamline its online registration and checkout features.
In July 2010 RS introduced www.designspark.com, an online community for design engineers providing free tools and resources, including its comprehensive online library of over 30,000 free 3D CAD product models and DesignSpark PCB, the company’s award-winning free professional standard PCB design software, used by professional designers, hobbyists and students.
More than 140,000 users have downloaded DesignSpark PCB since its launch, with the tool proving to be one of the most popular free PCB design software packages available. The next release of DesignSpark PCB due later this year, will simplify the task of costing and purchasing from within the tool.
The integration of these services within the framework of DesignSpark PCB will result in a much more efficient and enhanced end-to-end experience for users.
RS Components
