Retail EDI

Many people don’t believe EDI-based reports are useful.  Naysayers believe ERP solutions provide these reports independently.  This is the wrong view in my opinion.  First, you have to consider the types of reports requested.  You could find out what your sales to a client are from EDI – but, you are right, such a simple report can be provided by your accounting application.  Instead, try to think about some information they don’t report on – here are some examples:
1.  Variances between ordered, shipped, invoiced, remittance, etc.
2.  Sales, sell thru, fill rates by store, item, product category, etc.
3.  Charge back causing exceptions to processes (For example: late ASN, or invoice-to-ASN)
4.  Effectiveness of partners such as 3PLs, transportation companies or others

By treating all of the documents you trade with a client/supplier as a “Process” (Business process), you can gain significantly more information from your reports.  Processes consist of electronic documents and applied business rules.  For example, an active order-to-cash process may consist of an order, shipping document (ASN), invoice and other related documents, including FA (EDI 997s).  The business rules applied to documents within the business process and optionally to other external data sources are used to generate alerts, populate reports, scorecards, and dashboards.  The instance of the processes is triggered by receiving any of the documents in the process.  Treating ‘grouped’ business documents with applied business rules as a process allows us to measure gaps between events as well as the data included in each of the documents. 

The other day I had a long talk with an industry research group who wanted to know what visibility means in Retail technology.  All too often we see a banner or a product heading which proclaims a tool provides "visibility", but do they really?  Do you want visibility into the event, the process or both?  Should it be exception-based?  The grail for business managers throughout Retail and other verticals is 'true' supply chain visibility.  I have to ask: what is "visibility"? I have yet to find a definition which works for all scenarios.

You have to love the dynamics in the ASN.  You should recognize the one you use and recognizing it probably don’t give it a second thought. 

What kind of ASN do you use? 

For those of you who don’t know the 856 Advance Ship Notice (ASN) is used to notify your customer how you will be packing and shipping their order. It lists the contents of a shipment, carrier information, and the shipping cartons. The 856 provides flexibility for you to describe the contents and configuration of a shipment at various levels of detail.  It does other things, but the fascination for me right now is the packing configuration.

Yes, I am bringing up charge backs again.  The infamous offset expense that usually ends up wrecking the profitability of many retail suppliers is something which needs to be discussed continually.  For many suppliers, keeping up with a retailer’s compliance guides is a challenge.  For many, seeing a single order with a retailer fine or charge back attached to it may not seem like a big issue – add them up at the end of a quarter or annually and you will see 3-4% of your sales evaporate.