New York — Thomas Regional, an industrial information publisher, launched its Manufacturer Alliance Program to the industrial community recently. MAP enables manufacturers to provide detailed electronic product information to authorized distributor networks at no cost.

Industrial distributors who want to add an electronic arm to their businesses are frustrated that the process is costly, error-prone and time consuming. Yet, without it, they are missing an important sales and service function —electronic commerce.

When a manufacturer joins MAP, Thomas Regional gathers that company's online content and creates an e-commerce-enabled catalog containing accurate specification and pricing information. Thomas Regional then works with distributors to add catalogs to Web sites.