Resources

In a recent conversation with a well known CPG vendor, it became very clear that vendors are still confused by data quality when it comes to EDI 852. Simply put, vendors are struggling with the known and unknown data quality issues that exist with the data retailers send out via EDI 852. Specifically, vendors are... Read more »

If you are a vendor supplying to JC Penney, 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... Read more »

If you are a Home Depot vendor, 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... Read more »

Still messing with manual? If you are a vendor supplying to a retailer, you are no doubt receiving POS and inventory data. Sorting out all of that data can be a real headache, considering the files can be different for each retailer. Your team probably spends hours each week manually entering data, creating spreadsheets and... Read more »

Retailers and vendors in today’s retail market face the unenviable challenge of reducing costs and maintaining margins, despite falling overall sales and slow-to-recover consumer demand. One of the areas in which retailers are pushing back onto vendors is inventory management, which for vendors too often translates into retail partners that reduce overall inventories and require... Read more »

I sat down with an analyst at a consumer products company the other day, and had an in depth conversation with her about the process she goes through to export data from Retail Link and transform the data into reports for her management. I’ve been working with Walmart vendors for a long time, so I... Read more »

I read this very good article yesterday and wanted to share it.  Business Intelligence and Performance Management Rising to the Top of the Supply Chain Executive’s Agenda By Viktoriya Sadlovska and Nari Viswanathan In the context of today’s complex demand-supply networks, in which visibility into key performance indicators across the entire network is key to business... Read more »

A metric fundamental to managing the retail supply chain is weeks of supply (WOS). Weeks of supply tells the inventory manager how long the current on hand will last, based on current sales demand.  By keeping your eye on weeks of supply, you can avoid inventory stock outs and lost sales.  The basic calculation for... Read more »

I spent about 9 hours yesterday analyzing sales, order and forecast data for Walmart, Home Depot and Lowe’s vendors, and I am somewhat surprised by my observations.  It’s pretty clear that there are some min/max rules in place, as I can see patterns to the order quantities based on the OH inventory and the order... Read more »