Retail EDI

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(from the front page)

As an industry, companies serving the Retail EDI sector need to innovate their messaging and get their staff trained to discuss more than simply helping people connect to retailers.  The needs of your market are evolving and the messaging coming from sales and marketing staff doesn’t seem to be keeping pace.  Sound a little irreverent?  Someone has to say it.  Right now people are saying the same thing about Oracle, Microsoft and others.  EDI providers are not immune.

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Stop and think back about 10-13 years ago.  Think about how most of the hosted EDI companies were formed, where their (Your) financing came from and how little attention you paid to marketing efforts.  Astounding, right?  The magic rested solely in the power of your widget and how it could save the Supplier time and money. 
 
Remember when you were hearing about one retailer or another mandating EDI?  The years from 2002-2006 in particular – heady stuff, right?  At the time we called SaaS, either ASP or simply referred to it as “Hosted” software.  Things were easier for EDI companies in those days.  The “Brick & Mortar” opportunity was staring you right in the face and you had plenty of prospects to sell to.  The biggest challenge was often found in explaining what EDI was, and why the retailer required it.  Suppliers new to EDI needed a crash course.  We all struggled with it and most companies came up with documents like: EDI 101, EDI Basics or other tools to help educate companies on the merits, history and uses of EDI. 

Who values the simple “What is EDI” documentation?  For the most part replacement staff and the few companies newly seeking an EDI solution still read the information. 

EDI adoption in the Retail vertical for North America is at over 87% compared to around 40-50% a few years ago. Most Providers follow the 80/20 rule e.g. ‘we market to 80% of the industry’s requirements.’   As an EDI Provider what’s your message to the market now?  A few years ago we continually heard about companies releasing this or that feature in relation to a need in the Retail space.  We don’t hear it now because Retailers for the most part are not focusing on external process improvements to the same extent.  Nevertheless we see the same marketing material, same value proposition and uses being explained to us…  it’s time to evolve and include more of what you are able to do for the market.

I bring all this up after months of talking to Retailers and suppliers who need simple projects managed for them.  Case in point is one company who builds e-commerce sites (Website & Store) for suppliers.  Their requirements included:
• Manage our retail data (4 retailer connections)
• Receive a CSV purchase order from our e-store
• Display the CSV PO in a central interface with normal EDI orders
• Integrate both with QuickBooks
• Must be repeatable for clients using other accounting applications.

Sounds ridiculously simple, right?  Apparently not, because not one of the EDI providers they talked to, worked with e-stores.  You can take in and work with flat files, right?      

After hearing this I started looking around and found they were probably correct at least from a messaging perspective.  Very few companies talk about connectivity to e-commerce sites or much of any ‘thing’ other than the “retailer” (Retailer being a generic term in this case).  The exceptions are providers who have content online discussing connectivity to a TMS process on behalf of the retailer or discuss connectivity to UPS, FedEx or a few other areas. 

If we stop and think about the different areas Suppliers and Retailers use EDI data, you can see there are far more areas to push and pull data from than established GL modules or inventory systems.  They all need to be looked at.  Survey your client base and ask them what they need and how you can improve – what features they would like to see added.  I think you will find you are helping customers solve some very interesting problems which if articulated would allow you to gain more attention and ultimately more customers. 

Making a sale in today’s market is considerably more difficult than it was two or more years ago.  In order to stay relevant and continue to grow, you need to improve your efforts to help educate the market on what you do, how you do it and what types of problems you can solve.  Companies need to get their marketing personnel involved with the process.  Don’t leave out your salespeople.  Make sure they understand what your offerings include.  Get some of your support, sales, marketing and dev people involved in classes to improve their knowledge of the supply chain at large.  If you are developing something – get a marketing and sales resource involved early to insure solutions can be articulated to prospects and clients alike! 

There is an absolute ROI on an educated workforce.  When I was selling EDI, my individual sales were typically 4X that of the next highest salesperson.  I was able to deliver a higher sale per close because I took the time to understand the prospects entire business model and investigate every opportunity thoroughly.  My day started (Early) by picking the brain of our lead engineer on particular scenarios, alternatives and potential solutions.  I also had others I could talk to about process and model issues.  Many of them had decades of experience in addition to participating in classes from organizations such as VICS. 

If you don’t have in-house resources call in VICS, CSCMP or others and have them give your sales, marketing, support and dev groups a talk.  Send people to get CPFR, Inventory Planning or other certifications which may be relevant to processes your clients work with.  Helping your staff discuss business problems greater than solely EDI connectivity makes you more relevant in today’s market and helps you position more opportunities at a premium rather than a commodity basis.  Remember that while EDI is important – even critical – it is still a means to an end.  The data you manage is destined for a process in an application(s) and the more you know about the process the more able you are to be a part of it.   

The needs of your clients and the market are changing.  The content and ability of your staff must keep pace or many will find themselves losing clients.