Retail EDI

For years now we have seen great changes in how we conduct business.  Capabilities in out of the box systems like MS SQL Server (Probably from ’05 forward), and high speed bandwidth to name just two, have made it possible to do some very cool things over the last few years.  The proliferation of EDI usage in Retail is probably one of the smaller ones, but as an end to a means it is critical in Retail.  Many venture capitalists equate what EDI companies do and its function as “Middleware” because EDI doesn’t generate the data or consume it but simply communicates, transforms, etc.  EDI providers spin data to serve a myriad of purposes and a wide range of applications.  I am interested in how EDI users – Retailers and Suppliers – view innovation currently and how they see the EDI market.

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(From the front page)

For years now we have seen great changes in how we conduct business.  Capabilities in out of the box systems like MS SQL Server (Probably from ’05 forward), high speed bandwidth to name just two, have made it possible to do some very cool things over the last few years.  The proliferation of EDI usage in Retail is probably one of the smaller ones, but as an end to a means it is critical in Retail.  Many venture capitalists equate what EDI companies do and its function as “Middleware” because EDI doesn’t generate the data or consume it but simply communicates, transforms, etc.  EDI providers spin data to serve a myriad of purposes and a wide range of applications.  I am interested in how EDI users – Retailers and Suppliers – view innovation currently and how they see the EDI market.

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There are a few different areas to consider, but without taking this too far we should look at feature, service and price.  EDI is mission critical so we should look at them in the order listed e.g. if it doesn’t do what I need it to – why bother and if they can’t keep it running – get it out of my office. 

We are currently running a survey to help build the EDI & Supply Chain guide.  After reviewing data from almost 450 companies we have seen some pretty interesting trends in what companies do and don’t offer.  This is especially true when we look at some technologies people were skeptical of just a few years ago (Primarily Data Synch and RFID). 

For example these are percentages of EDI-related companies who offer the following:
• 48.1% data synchronization services
• 36.3% solutions in multiple languages
• 43.9% hosted solution of some sort
• 34.5% business intelligence or reporting solution
• 08.4% VMI/SBT solutions
• 15.8% provide RFID solutions
• 45.4% offer online labels, packing lists, etc.
• 54.7% offer a scan-n-pack solution
• 63.6% ability to cross reference by item or location independent of trading partner

Almost all of the companies offered support in the form of:
• Online (Chat tools)
• Live support (Phone)
• Free Training
• Web training/demos/documentation
• E-mail

Pricing is something we didn’t get into beyond whether they charged for transactional data in terms of documents or kilobytes/kilo characters.  In this area it’s a 60/40 split with the greater amount of companies charging by kilobyte.

There are variances though which need to be looked at in greater detail.  For instance while only 8.4% of respondents sell a turnkey VMI system, 84% of companies work with VMI processes.  Does this mean they trade EDI documents used for VMI (probably).  RFID is another: 15.8% sell a turnkey solution, but 48% can support various areas.  This may mean they have a strategy, have something in development, partnerships in place, etc.

My question then has to be: How do the users of these systems feel about the features, service and price?  To answer this we built a survey (Yes, another) to measure how satisfied retail suppliers are with their chosen solution.

17questions – all but a couple of questions are multiple choice and none of it is confidential.  Very specifically, we want to measure the following:
1. How far has transactional data commoditized in the industry
2. What the most common issues are in working with an EDI provider
3. Where companies are looking to make improvements (In any area)

By examining what users are concerned with, their costs and immediate challenges we hope to be able to provide some answers around how most companies could be achieving ROI and profitability on their EDI investments.  I have teamed up with a couple of consultants to provide some best practice advice to retailers and suppliers who answer #16 (They will not see any company or contact info).

Interested in taking the survey?  Here is the link: http://ow.ly/12BWN.  You can also access it here: http://survey.constantcontact.com/survey/a07e2pa7cnbg542o0sg/start.  We released the survey on Sunday and have already received about 180+ responses.  We are going to play it by ear in terms of how many responses we take in before aggregating and publishing results.  No EDI Provider’s company information or Respondent information will be published. 

Tell us how you feel the industry is doing.  Share your experience and you will find others willing to share their experience with you.

Offline questions:  to Jim, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it