Live pricing and availability feeds push supplier data directly into your system.
Your buyer needs pricing on 3/4" EMT couplings. In order to get the best pricing, they decide to call three distributors. They call the first distributor, wait on hold, get a price and stock count. Call the second distributor, different price, but they need to check if it's actually in stock. Check a third supplier's website, which shows product availability, but when they try to order, it's backordered with a two-week lead time.
By the time they have answers, an hour is gone. Sometimes the stock they were quoted is already sold to someone else. The information was accurate when they checked with the supplier. It just was not accurate by the time your buyer decided to act on it.
This is what happens when pricing and availability live in phone calls and website lookups. The data exists. It just does not flow to you until someone manually retrieves it.
Live pricing and availability feeds change this by pushing data directly into your system, automatically, throughout the day. When your buyer searches for that coupling, they see what the supplier has right now, at today's price, without needing to make a call.
A live feed is an automated data stream from a supplier's system to yours. Instead of your buyer looking up information manually, the supplier's system sends you updated pricing and stock levels on a schedule. Your system stores that data so that it is available instantly when someone needs it.
The feed typically includes:
When you search for a part in a system connected to live feeds, you are not seeing a static price list from last quarter. You are seeing data the supplier sent today, sometimes within the last few minutes.
The mechanics vary by supplier, but the pattern is consistent. The supplier maintains pricing and inventory in their ERP or warehouse management system. A scheduled process extracts that data and makes it available to you.
Step 1: Supplier updates their system. A shipment arrives, stock levels get adjusted. A price increase takes effect. Their ERP reflects the current state.
Step 2: Feed generation runs. On a schedule, the supplier's system creates a file or updates an API endpoint with current data. This might happen every 15 minutes, hourly, or nightly, depending on the supplier.
Step 3: Your system retrieves the data. Your procurement software pulls the feed, either by downloading a file or calling an API. The new data replaces the old.
Step 4: Buyers see current information. When someone searches for a product, they see the most recent data your system received.
Each contractor is different and is dependent on their size and needs. High-volume suppliers might offer API access with frequent updates. Smaller distributors might only provide a nightly file. Some suppliers only support their own web portal with no feed at all.
The term "real-time" gets used loosely. True real-time would mean the instant a supplier's stock changes, your system reflects it. That level of synchronization is rare outside of financial trading systems.
In practice, most supplier feeds update on a schedule:
A 15-minute-old price is not truly real-time. But it is dramatically better than a price list updated quarterly, or information that requires a phone call to retrieve.
The practical question is not whether the data is instantaneous. It is whether the data is fresh enough to make decisions confidently. For most ordering decisions, data updated within the hour is sufficient. For fast-moving commodities or time-sensitive bids, you want the shortest refresh interval your suppliers support.
When evaluating a system, specific things to think about include: how often does it pull from each supplier? What happens if a feed fails? How do you know if you are looking at stale data?
The problems with outdated pricing and availability are concrete and measurable.
Quoting jobs with yesterday's prices. Material costs change. Copper, steel, and other commodity prices fluctuate. If your estimator quotes a job using a price list from last month, and costs have increased 5% since then, that margin erosion comes directly from your profit.
Ordering against phantom inventory. A supplier's website shows 50 units in stock. You place the order. Then you get a call: actually backordered, two weeks out. Your crew is waiting. You scramble to find an alternative, probably at a higher price with expedited shipping.
Losing bids to faster competitors. While your buyer spends an hour gathering quotes by phone, a competitor with live feeds has already priced the job and submitted their order. Speed matters when margins are thin and opportunities move fast.
Wasting buyer time on information retrieval. Every hour your purchasing coordinator spends on hold or logging into supplier portals is an hour not spent on supplier negotiations, order consolidation, or solving problems. The information retrieval is necessary work, but it is not high-value work.
The underlying issue is the same in each case: decisions made on old information produce worse outcomes than decisions made on current information.
Feeds solve specific problems. They also have limitations worth understanding.
Branch-level availability is a common gap. A feed might show 200 units available across the supplier's network, but your local branch has zero. You still need to call to confirm the stock is where you need it, or accept a transfer delay.
Custom and specialty items often fall outside standard feeds. If you order non-stock items regularly, those will still require manual quoting.
Job-specific pricing negotiated for a particular project may not appear in the standard feed. Your contract price might be in the system, but special pricing for a large job often requires separate confirmation.
Feeds handle the high-volume, standard catalog items well. They do not eliminate the need for exceptions-based supplier communication.
Not every contractor needs automated feeds. A small operation with a few trusted suppliers might manage fine with phone calls and relationships. But certain patterns suggest the manual approach is creating drag.
Buyers spend more time gathering quotes than placing orders. If checking prices and availability takes longer than the actual purchasing decision, the information retrieval has become the bottleneck.
Orders regularly hit backorder surprises. When you frequently discover items are unavailable after placing orders, your availability data is not current enough to support good and timely decision making.
Price increases appear after you have already bid. If material cost surprises show up between bid submission and purchase, your pricing data is too stale for the bidding cycle you operate in.
Buyers check multiple portals or make multiple calls for each purchase. Every login, every phone call, every hold queue is friction. Multiplied across hundreds of purchases per month, it adds up to significant time.
You cannot compare suppliers without manual research. If seeing who has the best price and availability requires checking each supplier individually, consolidation and negotiation, opportunities slip by.
When pricing and availability flow into your system automatically, your buyers stop chasing information and start making decisions. Search for a part, see who has it in stock, compare prices, place the order. No phone calls. No portal logins. No waiting for callbacks.
Remarcable connects to over 450 electrical and mechanical suppliers with daily catalog updates. When you search for a part, you see current pricing and availability from your suppliers, side by side. Your buyers spend time on purchasing decisions, not information retrieval.
For contractors ready to stop calling around for quotes, Remarcable's procurement solution brings supplier pricing and availability into one place so your team can order with confidence.
