Guidelines for Establishing Inventory Request and Response
Connectivity between Distributor and Manufacturer
You get a call from a
customer in need of a part. You check your inventory, and you don't have
the part at your location or at any of your branch locations. What do
you do next?
-
Place your customer
on hold, call the manufacturer, leave a voice mail message, wait for the
return call, get the return call the next day, find out the manufacturer
has it at their plant just down the street from you. You call the
customer back but they've already purchased it from another
distributor.
-
Place your customer
on hold, send an inventory request to the manufacturer using EDI
transaction set 846. Wait -- you can' do this because, if your company
is like the majority of PTDA members, you're not set up for
EDI.
-
Continue to
chat with the customer while you toggle over to a web browser window,
log in to the manufacturer's website, enter the inventory number,
discover you need the manufacturer's inventory number --
not your number -- get the right
number, find the part and see the customer has hung up because they were
tired of waiting and called someone else.
-
With the click of
the mouse, access the manufacturer's inventory directly, find the part
at the plant down the street, and let the customer know you'll have it
out in the next morning's delivery. Your customer is
delighted!
Does option 4 sound
too good to be true? It's not. In fact, even the smallest distributors
are taking advantage of technology that allows them to view inventory
from their manufacturer partners.
Admittedly, there is some
front-end work to set up this process. Developed by the
Industry Relations Committee, PTDA's "Guidelines for Establishing
Inventory Request and Response Connectivity between Distributor and
Manufacturer" will help you identify the information both distributors
and manufacturers need to know in order to put in place systems that
will allow distributors to access product availability information
electronically from a manufacturer’s database.
Download "Guidelines for
Establishing Inventory Request and Response Connectivity between
Distributor and Manufacturer."
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