Friday, July 26, 2013

Using EDI to Manage Vendor Compliance and a Case Study of an Inbound Management System - Part 3: A Case Example

So far in this series, we have discussed the need for vendor compliance and the state of the vendor compliance market place. We know that EDI can be very beneficial in helping a retailer organization manage the compliance of its vendors; we know that organizations can gain significant visibility and increase the responsiveness of their supply chain operation through a best-in-class vendor compliance program. What we haven’t discussed so far is how this might look, which brings us to our case study of an Inbound Management System in practice. 

CASE STUDY:

The use of EDI continues to be the key ingredient in helping best-in-class organizations streamline their business operations and realize operational and financial benefits. Today we are looking at a tier 1 Canadian General Merchandiser.

Client Profile & Industry: One of Canada's largest diversified general merchandise retailers with over 600 retail locations and nearly 60,000 associated located in every province of Canada.
















This is a retailer who has gained unprecedented visibility into its inbound merchandise and has saved millions while making substantial improvements of speed and accuracy in its entire order-to-cash process.



Business Problems & Challenges: Retail operation was negatively affected due to limited visibility into inbound merchandise for xeven national DCs, minimal dock-door and DC level planning & execution capabilities, a compliance-management program that often did not work and overall poor quality data.


Solution: The Client relied on QLogitek's Cloud-Based Inbound Management system to manage inbound logistics, dock-door scheduling and to manage compliance of 3PL and other carrier partners.

















In the first year of compliance tracking and monitoring, the retailer realized approximately 80 million dollars in compliance fee charge backs to its trading community.



Results & Benefits: 1. 75% reduction in DC appointment scheduling staff, resulting in $2 Million in year-over-year savings 2. 400% ROI in a single quarter 3. The operation moved from a highly labour intensive process for the retailer to one of self-serve by the trading community 4. Appointments that took 3-5 days to confirm and book now take 3 seconds 5. Appointment cancellation rates have fallen from 12% to 3% 6. Complete visibility into real time merchandise arrival information 7. From thought to finish, the entire process took only 6 months.























The compliance information was used to fix and improve broken parts of the supply chain process. The compliance fee charge backs were practically eliminated in the 3rd year of the operation. As we can see, EDI can play a vital role in managing vendor compliance, benefiting both retailers and their vendor-partners.
               

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