Advance shipping notices (ASNs) can drive up efficiencies and accuracies by reducing discrepancies – which experts estimate happen about 30 percent of the time -- between invoices and the orders a retailer receives. That's because ASNs provide the retailer with detailed information on how the goods were packed for shipment, how many items are in the shipment, as well as product descriptions, carrier information, and even order information. ASNs also alert retailers that the goods have been shipped so they are ready to receive them. Read more...

Did you know that about one third of the invoices retailers receive from their vendors have some type of discrepancy with the actual order received. If that is surprising, what's even more alarming is the time it can take to track down and fix the error – time that translates into, money of course. Read more...

The recent superstorm, Sandy, and the Nor’easter that followed one week later, are continual reminders that businesses need to build redundancies and create business continuity plans for services and infrastructure. Not only do outages have immediate impact to operations, they also significantly impact supply chains. In fact, a recent study led by global multi-line insurance provider Zurich Insurance Group and conducted by the Business Continuity Institute (BCI) found that the leading cause of supply chain disruption is unplanned IT or telecom outages.

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