Author: Helen Thomas

EDI 852 Improves Sales and Inventory Handling

Posted on August 26, 2010 by - Blog, EDI 852

Models for supply chain excellence, including vendor managed inventory (VMI); collaborative planning, forecasting, and replenishment (CPFR); efficient consumer response (ECR); and demand-driven supply networks (DDSN), are proving difficult for most retailers to implement.  A fundamental challenge inherent in these models is sharing point-of-sale demand data with suppliers. Although EDI 852 is a common solution, retailers are finding EDI alone does not solve the problem and provide the promised benefits. Why? Because sharing data alone is not enough… suppliers need a tool to analyze the data, draw out insight and then take action.

Now, there is a solution – Accelerated Analytics provides the tools necessary in a hosted solution, so neither the retailer or supplier have to make a costly technology investment.

Accelerated Analytics is a hosted power tool for sharing point of sale (POS) data analysis with suppliers. EDI 852 product activity data based on point of sale (POS) transactions and transmitted via EDI 852 is the backbone of a successful vendor managed inventory program. Unfortunately, our experience has shown very few suppliers are able to use the information. The suppliers we’ve spoken to are frustrated by what they perceive as an overwhelming amount of point of sale data, because they don’t have the tools to analyze and report. Sending data via EDI 852 to suppliers simply does not translate into an optimized supply chain. Retailers are frustrated with suppliers because they cannot actively participate in vendor managed inventory and sales promotion without the data. It’s a no-win for both sides and a huge lost opportunity.

Until now, the best retailers could hope for was to transmit EDI 852 files to their suppliers, who would accept the data and either print a static report or export the data into Excel.  Already busy suppliers found static reports to be of limited use.  Getting the IT department involved to deal with a huge data file was expensive and too much of a hassle.

Accelerated Analytics changes this entire picture by accepting point of sale data via electronic data interchange EDI 852, or nearly any standard format from the retailer, and providing it to the supplier via our web based point of sale analysis power tool. Accelerated Analytics hosts 100% of the hardware and software, so neither the retailer or supplier have to invest a single dollar.

What if my organization is not using vendor managed inventory (VMI)?
Even if your organization is not currently using vendor managed inventory (VMI), Accelerated Analytics can provide a significant supply chain benefit by reducing costs, reducing inventory levels and increasing profits. Efficient supply chain management requires the rapid and accurate transfer of information throughout a supply system.  Accelerated Analytics accomplishes this goal quickly and with no expensive new infrastructure.  Accelerated Analytics can be used as a tool for VMI or as a stand-along solution separate from VMI.

What if my organization is not using EDI or only using EDI with a small percentage of vendors?
No problem, Accelerated Analytics can accept POS data via nearly any custom data format. In fact, in many situations, there are benefits to not using EDI because we can accept a richer and more granular data set, which improves the analysis results.

Our suppliers are not asking for POS data.
No surprise, they probably lack the tools to manage and analyze that volume of data and they know with greater knowledge comes greater accountability. Successful business transformation does not begin as a reaction, but rather because business leaders have the vision to proactively invest in tools which drive their business forward faster than their competition. If your organization was the market leader in supply chain collaboration which improved your in-stock and inventory turns by 25 or 30%, what would happen to your market share position?

What is CPFR?
(CPFR) Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment is a business practice that combines the intelligence of multiple trading partners in the planning and fulfillment of customer demand. Accelerated Analytics provides the infrastructure to support CPFR by connecting retailers and suppliers together with a POS data analysis tool, shared business best practices and exception management.

Home Depot EDI 852 Reporting

Posted on August 25, 2010 by - Blog, EDI 852

If you are a Home Depot vendor, you are eligible to receive product sales activity and inventory data via EDI 852 from Home Depot. 

The Home Depot EDI 852 document will contain SKU/UPC level units sold, units on hand and dollars sold for every store where your products are sold.  The files are sent one time per week summarizing the prior week’s activity.

What can you do with EDI 852 from Home Depot?

  • Analyze SKU/store level sales
  • Analyze SKU/store level on hand
  • Analyze average unit selling price by SKU/store
  • Analyze plan-o-gram compliance by verifying on hand and selling at planned stores
  • Identify out of stock stores, and even forecast demand based on prior sales
  • Group stores into A, B, C categories based on SKU level sales volume

Home Depot merchandisers expect vendors to receive and use EDI 852 data to analyze and manage their SKU activity.  If you are not already using the data, of if you are not using as well as you could be, then you are missing sales opportunities.  Don’t wait for your merchandiser to call you and ask a question you can’t address – start working with the data today.  

Bloomingdales EDI 852 Reporting

Posted on August 20, 2010 by - Blog, EDI 852

If you are a vendor supplying to Bloomingdales, you are eligible to receive product sales activity and inventory data via EDI 852. Preparing to setup and receive the EDI 852 files can be confusing, and creating usable reports for your team can be very time consuming. Fortunately, Accelerated Analytics® provides a simple, outsourced service for all your Bloomingdales EDI 852 reporting needs.

Using Accelerated Analytics® makes all your reporting headaches go away. With Accelerated Analytics®, we handle all the data conversion, database hosting and reporting. We even provide training and the end user reporting tools. 

Accelerated Analytics® benefits:

  • We do the EDI 852 translation
  • Eliminate manual data entry and manipulation
  • Consolidate all Bloomingdales store data on all your SKU’s into one reporting database
  • Pre-built exception reports with color coded dashboards
  • No software or hardware to purchase
  • Sophisticated charts and graphs

Available reports:

  • This weeks sales and inventory by store and SKU
  • Last weeks sales and inventory by store and SKU
  • This months sales and inventory by store and SKU
  • 6 week rolling sales and inventory by store and SKU
  • Stove level stock-out exposure
  • Stove level overstock
  • Fast/slow selling items
  • Sell-thru
  • Inventory turns
  • Days supply on hand

Accelerated Analytics® will give you the ability to anticipate changes in sales and inventory, so you can make adjustments before a costly mistake occurs. Our EDI 852 reporting is the best on the market. 

Making the most of Retail Link Data

Posted on August 18, 2010 by - Blog

Walmart vendors have access to a wealth of sales and inventory data through Walmart’s Retail Link portal. The challenge for many vendors, is that Retail Link can provide access to extremely detailed data, which increases the quantity and difficulty of analyzing the data and making fast business decisions. Without the right tools, the process can be very time consuming and difficult.

If you are a Walmart vendor, invest in a set of tools that will allow you to store and quickly analyze Retail Link data. The tool should allow storage of multiple years of store and item level detail and it should provide filtering and sorting to narrow the focus of your decision making. The focus of your fist analysis efforts should be sales velocity and inventory in-stock. The tool should automatically filter the top 50 and bottom 50 stores by unit sales volume. This allows the vendor to quickly identify which stores are driving the most volume, as well as the stores that need immediate attention. Next, it is critical to identify on a daily or weekly basis, the stores that are out of stock. Fixing the inventory out of stock in these stores will directly increase your sales.

Become proactive in dealing with out of stock at a store level,  by reviewing the unit sales volume for all of your out of stock stores for the 8 periods prior to the out of stock. Determine an average period units sold, and then identify for each store how many periods it takes to get new inventory to the store. So, for example, if a store is averaging 6 units per week, and it takes 14 days to get inventory to the store, then the minimum inventory level that store should maintain at all times is 12 units. This provides two weeks of inventory on-hand and will allow for proactive replenishment to avoid stock-out exposure. As a Wal-Mart vendor, you may be selling into over 3,500 Walmart stores, but if you complete this analysis for the top 70 or 80% of your stores based on units sold velocity, you will have gone a long way toward reducing out of stock situations and increasing sales.

Scan Based Trade Growing?

Posted on August 18, 2010 by - Blog

I’m making a prediction – Scan Based Trading (SBT) will gain popularity in 2011 and will emerge in categories not typically engaged in SBT.  In an article today in the WSJ titled “Retailers Are Sold on Frugality”, Walmart, Home Depot and Lowe’s are predicting the upcoming holiday season may be poor.  They believe consumers remain very cautious about spending.  The good news, if there is any, is that retailers have successfully cut expenses during the downturn [see figure 1], so most are making a profit despite lower sales.  The bad news is that they are doing that by tough price negotiations with vendors, more reliance on part time workers and generally lower spending across the board.

 

“How in the heck can you increase earnings with tighter revenue?  The answer is that we [Home Depot] expect some expense relief.”  Chief Financial Officer Carol Tome.  If you are a vendor to a major retailer – take note of that quote.

Back to SBT.  Scan Based Trade relationships with vendors have been around for a long time, but they have traditionally been reserved for fast moving food and consumer goods.  Things like bread and milk, etc. However, savvy financial executives at retailers have realized moving from a traditional purchasing model to an SBT model removes inventory from their balance sheet, reduces their labor and shipping and therefore dramatically increases their bottom line.  Let me give a real world example.  Accelerated Analytics processes data for an SBT program at one of the largest drug store chains in the US.  This retailer is in the process of moving their entire book department from a traditional model to SBT.  In the past, the retailer had millions of dollars of book inventory on their balance sheet, but today they have no books on their balance sheet and their vendor handles all DSD shipping, in store merchandising and carries all the inventory on their balance sheet until sold.  When the book goes through the cash register, the sale is split between the vendor and the retailer.  The retailer essentially provides shelf space and the vendor handles the category from start to finish.  The vendor benefits because they have more control on merchandise assortment and planning and they get paid faster.  With daily sales and payments based on the actual sales, the vendor no longer has to wait for 90 days to be paid on a traditional invoice.  The retailer wins because their balance sheet is dramatically improved, their labor is reduced, they avoid mark downs, etc, etc.

This is a huge paradigm shift, SBT in the book category is revolutionary.  Think SBT will never apply to your category – think again.  I’ve had conversations with retailers and vendors about moving cosmetics, electronics, clothing and hardware to SBT.  It’s not a question of if, it’s simply a question of when.  Start thinking today about when your organization can support and even recommend SBT to your retailer and you will be way ahead of your competitors.  Trust me, your CFO would like to be paid daily instead of net 90.

Have you heard of “Blue Ocean” strategy?  If not, I highly recommend looking up the Harvard Business Review article and you will see how SBT is a blue ocean strategy for your business.

I’d like to hear your thoughts on the challenges/opportunities for SBT in your category.

Six key facts your EDI 852 can tell you about your business

Posted on August 17, 2010 by - Blog, EDI 852

A vendor to a large home improvement retailer called Friday,  and asked a very simple question: “What can the EDI 852 data our retail customer is sending us tell us about our business?”

This is a great question and one we hear often. It’s worth exploring for a few minutes. Here are six things your EDI 852 data can tell you about your business.

(1) At a store level, what items are out of stock or will go out of stock soon. The key measure here is units on hand. By isolating each of your items at a store level and applying filtering for your desired min/max inventory position, you can quickly determine where the problems exist. We recommend you also calculate an average units sold based on a reasonable time frame for your business (last 4 weeks or last 8 weeks) and then use this to calculate inventory weeks supply on-hand. If your products move very quickly,  convert this to days supply on-hand.  The weeks/days supply on-hand is a predictive indicator that will alert you to trouble while you still have time to take action.

(2) At a store level, what items are overstocked. The key measure here is also units on-hand, but again, the weeks or days supply is very helpful in identifying an overstock situation.

(3) Top selling items. The key measure here is units sold. Isolate one item at a store by store level and then filter the top items by units sold. e.g. top 10 items or top 25 items. We also recommend calculating sell-thru for each of your items. Sell-thru is a composite measure that shows sales and inventory in one metric. Sell-thru is very useful as a filter for top selling items. Maybe more useful than simple units sold.

(4) Poor selling items. This is essentially the same as #3 but simply a reverse on the filter.

(5) Period over period comparisons. We encourage vendors to save all EDI 852 files for at least 18 months. This provides a great opportunity to compare sales and inventory for similar periods and gain an understanding of how to adjust your inventory min/max. (e.g. sales for week 3 2006 vs. week 3 2007)

(6) Regional comparisons. Isolating item sales and on-hand by geographic regions can provide very useful insight. Especially with store level detail that includes zip code and major metro descriptions. Most retailers provide a detailed store list with a hierarchy by region, state, city and zip. Some retailers will also provide rich demographic information, which can be integrated into this analysis.

Most EDI 852 data arrives with only a couple very basic measures for units on-hand and units sold. By extending these units and calculating weeks supply and sell-thru, you can learn a great deal about your business. The coaching we provided to this vendor also included this advise – if you are spending more than 10 minutes manipulating data, it’s too long. Engage an outsourced service to do the EDI 852 translation, database storage and number crunching. Focus your team on the analysis activities and engaging with the retail buyers to improve your business.

CVS EDI 852 Reporting

Posted on August 10, 2010 by - Blog

If you are a vendor supplying to CVS, you are eligible to receive product sales activity and inventory data via EDI 852. Preparing to setup and receive the EDI 852 files can be confusing, and creating usable reports for your team can be very time consuming. Fortunately, Accelerated Analytics® provides a simple, outsourced service for all your CVS EDI 852 reporting needs.

Using Accelerated Analytics® makes all your reporting headaches go away. With Accelerated Analytics®, we handle all the data conversion, database hosting and reporting. We even provide training and the end user reporting tools. 

Accelerated Analytics® benefits:

  • Eliminate manual data entry and manipulation
  • Consolidate all CVS store data on all your SKU’s into one reporting database
  • Pre-built exception reports with color coded dashboards
  • No software or hardware to purchase
  • Sophisticated charts and graphs

Available reports:

  • This weeks sales and inventory by store and SKU
  • Last weeks sales and inventory by store and SKU
  • This months sales and inventory by store and SKU
  • 6 week rolling sales and inventory by store and SKU
  • Sell-thru
  • Inventory turns
  • Days supply on hand 

Accelerated Analytics® will give you the ability to anticipate changes in sales and inventory, so you can make adjustments before a costly mistake occurs. Our EDI 852 reporting is the best on the market. 

Dillards EDI 852 Reporting

Posted on August 9, 2010 by - Blog, EDI 852

If you are a vendor supplying to Dillards, you are eligible to receive product sales activity and inventory data via EDI 852. Preparing to setup and receive the EDI 852 files can be confusing, and creating usable reports for your team can be very time consuming. Fortunately, Accelerated Analytics® provides a simple, outsourced service for all your Dillards EDI 852 reporting needs.

Using Accelerated Analytics® makes all your reporting headaches go away. With Accelerated Analytics®, we handle all the data conversion, database hosting and reporting. We even provide training and the end user reporting tools. 

Accelerated Analytics® benefits:

  • Eliminate manual data entry and manipulation
  • Consolidate all Dillards store data on all your SKU’s into one reporting database
  • Pre-built exception reports with color coded dashboards
  • No software or hardware to purchase
  • Sophisticated charts and graphs

Available reports:

  • This weeks sales and inventory by store and SKU
  • Last weeks sales and inventory by store and SKU
  • This months sales and inventory by store and SKU
  • 6 week rolling sales and inventory by store and SKU
  • Sell-thru
  • Inventory turns
  • Days supply on hand

Accelerated Analytics® will give you the ability to anticipate changes in sales and inventory, so you can make adjustments before a costly mistake occurs. Our EDI 852 reporting is the best on the market. 

Nordstrom EDI 852 Reporting

Posted on August 2, 2010 by - Blog, EDI 852

If you are a vendor supplying to Nordstrom, you are eligible to receive product sales activity and inventory data via EDI 852. Preparing to setup and receive the EDI 852 files can be confusing, and creating usable reports for your team can be very time consuming. Fortunately, Accelerated Analytics® provides a simple, outsourced service for all your Nordstrom EDI 852 reporting needs.

Using Accelerated Analytics® makes all your reporting headaches go away. With Accelerated Analytics®, we handle all the data conversion, database hosting and reporting. We even provide training and the end user reporting tools. 

Accelerated Analytics® benefits:

  • Eliminate manual data entry and manipulation
  • Consolidate all Nordstrom store data on all your SKU’s into one reporting database
  • Pre-built exception reports with color coded dashboards
  • No software or hardware to purchase
  • Sophisticated charts and graphs

Available reports:

  • This weeks sales and inventory by store and SKU
  • Last weeks sales and inventory by store and SKU
  • This months sales and inventory by store and SKU
  • 6 week rolling sales and inventory by store and SKU
  • Sell-thru
  • Inventory turns
  • Days supply on hand

Accelerated Analytics® will give you the ability to anticipate changes in sales and inventory, so you can make adjustments before a costly mistake occurs. 

Using Accelerated Analytics® with EDI 852 Data

Posted on August 2, 2010 by - Blog, EDI 852

Electronic data interchange (EDI), specifically EDI 852 sales data, is a valuable resource for vendors. Unfortunately, without the proper tools, the data can be difficult to work with and analyze. That is why we created the Accelerated Analytics® POS and EDI 852 data analysis service. We remove all the manual data work and provide you with item and store level reports. Our pre-configured reports provide on-hand, sales and sell-thru for each of your retail partners.

EDI 852 product activity data, based on point of sale (POS) transactions and transmitted via EDI 852, is the backbone of a successful vendor managed inventory program. Unfortunately, the vendors we’ve spoken to are frustrated by what they perceive as an overwhelming amount of point of sale data, because they don’t have the tools to analyze and report. Sending data via EDI 852 to suppliers simply does not translate into an optimized supply chain. Retailers are frustrated with suppliers because they cannot actively participate in vendor managed inventory and sales promotion without the data. It’s a no-win for both sides and a huge lost opportunity.

Case Study

A vendor customer of Accelerated Analytics® who supplies to a large retailer,  was faced with the difficulty of analyzing EDI 852 on their items from over 1,800 stores. The data would arrive on Sunday night, which they would translate into a spreadsheet, and then begin to identify slow selling stores and stores in a stock-out situation. The analysis was complex and took about 20 hours of administrative time each week. Worst of all, they have a dozen retail customers that were also offering to send EDI 852 data, but they didn’t have the time to analyze that much data. They knew they were missing valuable sales, but they did not have any way to identify the problem stores and communicate with their buyers.

They then engaged the Accelerated Analytics® service. Our team set up a custom database in our hosted data center and began translating the EDI 852 data and loading it into our reporting tools. Within two weeks, the vendor had customized reports by item and store showing units sales and on-hand position. From these reports, they were able to quickly determine which stores were causing the lost sales. Using our simple reports, they scheduled a meeting with their buyer. It was a totally new experience for both the buyer and the vendor because they had quantitative reports isolating the problems stores. Together, they determined that a 1,200 store blanket order was the solution. It was the vendors largest order to date, and without Accelerated Analytics®, they would have never been able to show the buyer where the problems were. The vendor estimates our reports increased their sales by over $5 million dollars in less than one month.

Accelerated Analytics® is a comprehensive,  outsourced service. No matter how large or small your IT department is, our service will eliminate the headache of EDI 852 data analysis and provide the reports you need to increase sell-thru and in-stock. Our on boarding process is simple and we already cover over 50 retailers.