DigiKey’s Price and Availability Tool Eases Impatience

Update: myLists has replaced PandA. myLists is an all-in-one list management tool that quickly returns real-time price and availability information and provides you with even more information, such as lifecycle status. Just like the previous tool, satisfy your need for instant gratification without testing your patience!

Confession of the day, I am impatient. I am only partially ashamed, as patience is a lesson I try to impart on my children at least 50 times each day. In this day and age, when we are all busy running a million miles an hour trying to balance work, home, family and more, my impatience is noticeable to me (and others!) often. Which leads me to my next confession, in this online shopping age my impatience is exacerbated exponentially by one thing: waiting. In my mind it defeats the whole purpose of online shopping. I am completing my inquiries online because I don’t want to deal with traffic, parking, people, waiting in line, etc. However, if I am then having to send the company an email and waiting to get answers or pricing it plays directly into my impatience problems.

Thus, begins my quest to get rid of online shopping instances in which I have found myself waiting. One example, would be requesting pricing and availability for my Bills of Materials. It can be an awkward process to compile this oneself. Searching part by part while using a complicated mapping tool. Then you factor in different formats in which I use to complete my parts list and when I need special things (more than one quantity, Manufacturer, etc.); and the appeal of just emailing in a pricing and availability request becomes more attractive. However, I recently encountered a tool in which I could mitigate some of those problems, DigiKey’s pricing and availability tool. Smartly branded PandA (Pricing and Availability), it offers instant gratification for my impatience problem with minimal effort (see comments above) required.

I used it on a large BOM (over 25 parts requested) and dropped it by Excel file into the “Upload a file” area. After following their mapping process, which meant selecting headers and then clicking on the products and quantities I wanted, I had pricing and availability within 5 minutes. The best part for me was the ability to download, thus populating my spreadsheet for approval instantly. It’s a unique and refreshing tool that I haven’t found matched on any other Distributors’ websites.

Overall advice, exercise your ability to be impatient carefully. Don’t waste it on waiting for pricing information, utilize the DigiKey PandA tool for the instant gratification we have all grown to expect. It is a new, unique and much needed tool that will continue to get better through our usage and suggestions.