Retail EDI

I’ve also “started” a new venture –a gift shop/store at a local “open air market” (aka Farmer’s Market) in the Palm Springs area.  And since things there are doing … well, pretty good so far … I’m thinking of going “brick and mortar” and starting a regular store in a real store front – not just on weekends, but 7 days a week and seeing how it goes and grows…

At Bear Necessities (what we’re calling the gift shop), we really strive to deliver great prices and excellent service.  We had a customer have an issue with an item and I went out of the way to order a new one and deliver it to the customer’s local place of business.  They were happy with that support.

 And service and support came to mind with all of the talk about the recently announced “merger” of two of the EDI world’s biggest players – GXS and Inovis.  So many fear that the relatively superior service and support from Inovis will slip with the mating of GXS, who is not known for exemplary support and service…

So, on with the original article and topics of support and service and the importance of it all…

As some of you may know, I’ve spent many years in retail and “customer service” types of industries & businesses.  From managing a rental car location to managing a retail store or two, I’ve often been right there, on the front lines of customer service, support and sales.  I’ve even done technical support, helping users get through complex (and not-too-complex) issues that they’re having with their systems.

There is lots of support on the résumé and in the background; so it should come as no surprise to anybody that I can tend to be pretty critical of bad service and support.  That background even still plays in the way that I work with our vendors and trading partners when I’m wearing the “EDI GUY” hat.

Recently, I stopped at one of those boxy fast food restaurants on the way in to work.  I was longing for some breakfast and they have really good egg sandwiches…  Truly, this chain is one of the favorites for when I’m on the road and wanting something to munch.  As I walk up to the counter, one of the other customers is being given her cup of coffee and then the person behind the counter starts making some other drink (a milkshake?) and then takes it over to the drive through window.  Then I see another employee – this one with the drive-through headset on – come from back there and do something on the register.  Then she disappears back to the window.  I’m in the restaurant a few minutes – and nobody - NOBODY recognizes that I’m there or says “I’ll be right with you!”…  As a matter of fact, the ONLY person that works there that notices that I’m there is the cleaning person with the bucket and the mop… and SHE says “Sorry” as I walk away from the counter – without any service or help at all.

So I go away from the place, without what I’d stopped for, and without any satisfaction from that business.  It should be noted that it’s also not an “easy” location to get to.  The restaurant has one driveway that it shares with a gas station.  I have to make a u-turn at a light beyond the driveway, come back and then I have to leave and make another u-turn at another light to go back on the way to work.  It’s loop-the-loop for breakfast.

I was ticked off and have a sour “taste” for that restaurant.  And it’s not even like the drive-through was super busy and hopping with a long line of cars.  There was one car at the window and one more waiting. 

But this really brought to mind the bad ways customers are serviced – or can be – by so many others.  We’ve probably all had some experience with bad service when we’re ready to plunk down some of our hard-earned cash for a product or service.  We’ve seen it in movies – from Julia Roberts being ‘snubbed’ by the high-end retail store in “Pretty Woman” to other samples of “we’re just too important to care about you” activities at some retailers, restaurants and other establishments of business.

You may be asking, “What in the heck does this have to do with EDI and vendor management?”…  Well, I’ll tell you.

Each day, we may be in contact with any number of our trading partners.  Whether we’re alerting them to an issue with the data they’ve sent or they’re asking questions about this data element or if we’re going to use this document or that document any-time soon.  We get questions from our co-workers - whether it’s our buying departments, our warehouses, our accounting groups, or whomever.  It all comes back to service; how we deal with those questions, contacts and concerns.  And we can either provide good support and service or bad support and service.  It’s up to us.

If you follow any of the EDI-related boards and sites, you can often see comments about the support from this testing company or that network/VAN or this other EDI provider.  You’ll see “they’re stupid!” to “what a rip-off!” throughout the group’s archives and old messages.  Complaints about down-time, exorbitant testing fees or other issues pop up and pepper the messages.  And it seems that nearly everybody gets a slap from time to time.

Even some of the big retailers and vendors get slapped from time to time, as well.  One of the things I try to do is to keep a lot of the posts “vendor neutral” unless it’s about a specific vendor.  And I’ve also felt like I have to “stick up” for some of the companies being slapped down from time to time.  Even in the writing I do here, I try to not mention names or even “change the names to protect the innocent” (and not so innocent!)…

A lot of this support can just be as simple as responding to a trading partner’s requests or contacts.  If a vendor has a question about your mapping specification or a question about what information they should use or the status of an acknowledgement for a document they transmitted, it’s in our interest to get back to them with an answer – let them know that you’re working on it or that you’re aware of the issue and you’ll give them a response in a few hours or … well, whatever.

If you’re the vendor, you have an even more important reason for servicing and supporting your trading partners.  They’re your customers.  And your customers are the life-blood of your business.

And the same can hold true to us retailers, too.  We need to work with our vendors – our trading partners – because their products are often our life-blood, too.  I mean, if a clothing store has no clothing to sell, what are they doing?  You need that vendor’s products on your shelves to sell it to your own customers down the line.

One of the things that I keep mentioning (in this article and others) is the term “TRADING PARTNER”…  And it’s an important term in the EDI world.  And one that may sometimes be forgotten or just used without concepts about what it means.

From the dictionary, we know that “PARTNER” can mean “associate, affiliate, colleague, collaborator, cohort, equal” and also “companion, mate, other half, significant other, wife, husband” and, as a verb, mean to “join, team up, connect, link-up” but a really great one is to “UNITE”.  Our trading partners are our EQUALS in many of the things we do.  It’s a symbiotic relationship where both parties get something from the other, some kind of benefit.

In the retail world, the buyer gets products and sells them and makes money.  The vendor makes products and sells them and makes money.  On both sides of the partnership, there are benefits from collaborating with the other partner, the other half.  Both partners are supporting the other partner through their actions and the business that they engage in.

It’s important that we remember that term “partner” when we’re working with the vendors we buy from or the retailers we sell to.  And it’s important that we support each other in whatever we’re undertaking – whether putting out a new document or migrating to a different network/VAN.

Just like in our relationships we have outside of the EDI world – with our husbands, wives, children, parents, neighbors, bosses, bank tellers or whomever, that communication is an important aspect of that support.  Think of how any of the relationships you have in your non-EDI life that could and would suffer if you stopped communicating…  Sure, your kids might be happy because you’re no longer telling them to “pick up those clothes!” or “close the door!” or “clean up this mess” or whatever it is you’re telling them.  But then they’d also miss out on the times you say “I love you” or “I’m proud of you” or “you did a great job”. 

I’ve got a senior parent that I … take-care of.  My mom is certainly not suffering from anything serious, but she is 74 years old…  Even at 74, she’s still “working” and doing computer programming and working for a company she’s been with for years.  I live a few houses down the street from her.  We do a lot of things together and I help to take care of her home.  We’ll go shopping for both houses or go out to dinner or see a movie or whatever…  Most people don’t believe that she’s 74 years old because she’s pretty “gung-ho” for a Silver Senior…  But there are some things that being a senior DOES mean that require the attention of somebody else.  That’s where I come in.

But we communicate with each other.  When she’s not feeling good, she’s supposed to put it out there so I can help her.  When she needs a plant moved or needs a box off of a high shelf, she asks for help.  If she stopped communicating these little – but oh-so-important things – then her health could go down or her “quality of life” could slip.

But it’s that communication in our relationship that really keeps us going and getting things done. 

Partnerships and support and service all go hand in hand.  That communication piece with your trading partners needs to be there, you need to be available for them and they need to be available for you.  If you’ve got a large trading partner community, one of the best ways to address that would be to have some way of alerting your trading partners to any changes or additions.  This could be done as simply as having an “EDI” related page on your website, with up-to-date contact information or you could maintain a mailing list of your trading partners and their EDI contacts so that you can e-mail them any new changes.

That’s one other aspect of support and service that sometimes falls apart and can cause problems with your customers and partners.  A good example – the other day, I was longing for a good roast beef sandwich.  And I happened to have some coupons for a certain chain of roast beef restaurants.  I went to the local one (by work) only to find a CLOSED sign in the window and a “NO TRESSPASSING” sign on the door.  Turns out that the franchisee of the chain got evicted from the property they were renting.  So all of that longing I had was gone – in an instant – and so was the sale I was going to give them.  When it comes to this particular chain’s sandwiches, I tend to be a lot of them (when they’re on sale) and take them home and put them in bags and in the freezer.  Then when the craving hits, I can pull one out of the freezer, heat it up and yum-yum, a warm roast beef sandwich (usually with cheese!) is on the plate.

But they were closed and there was no service or support available.  So now I’ll have to find another restaurant to which I will give those sales to.  And this can also happen in our EDI relationships – or in the relationships between our company and the companies we buy from or sell to.

If you sell a product that I can get from another vendor – let’s say you sell baseballs – and I can buy them from you for $1.00 each or I can get them from a competitor for $1.05 each, and I’m having issues in dealing with you – then I can ask if that 5 cents each savings is worth it, if I’m constantly getting bad data from you – when I get data at all.  As you know, I’m not a fan of the charge-back and we don’t do them.  So instead of hitting the charge-back button, I can just start buying balls from Bob’s Baseballs instead of Harvey’s Horsehides & Sports Equipment.

Support and service are tantamount to everything we do; customers appreciate it.