Rating BOM Import Tools / Online electronics

Anyone with decent excel skills can align and convert a BOM in Excel file to the text file required and import the BOM for almost instantaneous price and availability from the major component suppliers. Digikey is by far our favorite parts purchasing website.  Not the least expensive, but it is the easiest to use, has great links to datasheets and the costs are somewhat made up by the time the site saves you. This has resulted in the majority of our customers using Digikey at the design stage and placing digikey part numbers right in the Bill of Materials. This also allows the buyer to quote or purchase by importing the BOM right into the website for quick price and availability. The only quirk with the Digikey site is when the BOM has incorrect, or obsolete parts that dont import, its very difficult to find alternates and page back and forth between sourcing pages to your order. Other than that their system is golden! Mouser also has this capability but is our second choice for online purchasing and quotes. We tend to go to DK first, then source whats not available from Mouser. Anything beyond that we try and obtain from Newark.

As far as cost shipping and customer service we like all three. I think Digikey get first shot on based on the website alone. Anyone else see this the same way? Also - why dont the larger, volume parts suppliers have just as good BOM import tools. I dont mean to make light of inside sales people but the response can be from slow to never in time to get a quote in to the end customer. Why cant they develop sites to import for production qtys?