WOW, looking at the calendar I'm amazed at how fast this year has already gone... it's nearly the middle of the year already. For many of you, your well into your 2012 projects so here's hoping all is going according to plan.Over the years I've been asked by my clients "So where do we stand in comparison to others in our space?" when it comes to electronic trading. For this article I thought it might be interesting to conduct a review of the top 200 buying organizations and share the percentage of various Business Documents or processes that are now being done electronically by Retailer Category (keep in mind that some retailers cross over several Categories so I'm placed those in the Category where they got their start. Also, most Retailers are doing E-Commerce so those numbers in the E-Commerce Category are those that do not have a Retail Store footprint)
Below are my findings based review EDI specifications and data flow -
| Grocery/ Food Distribution |
Electronics | Sporting Goods |
Mass Merchants |
Department Store | Industrial Supply |
Hardware Retail/ Wholesale |
Books/ Publishing |
E-Commerce | |
| Purchase Order | 99% | 99% | 99% | 99% | 99% | 99% | 75% - much is Franchisee Driven | 99% | 100% |
| Purchase Order Changes/cancelations | 5% | 70% | 50% | 50% | 70% | 25% | 10% | 30% | 75% |
| Purchase Order Acknowledgments/order Status | 5% | 20% | 40% Using 855 | 30% | 30% Using 870 | 10% | 5% | 10% | 75% |
| ASN | 30% - mostly used for DC shipments | 70% | 80% | 85% | 85% | 60% | 75% - much is Franchisee Driven | 40% | 99% |
| Transportation Routing | 10% using 204/211 | 10% | 40% using 753/754 | 40% | 40% | 5% | 10% | 10% | 10% |
| Shipment Status | 5% | 0% | 5% | 20% | 20% | 5% | 10% | 10% | 50% |
| Invoice | 99% - does not include SBT | 80% | 90% | 99% | 99% | 99% | 99% | 99% | 80% |
| Remittance | 40% | 30% | 5% | 20% | 40% | 5% | 10% | 10% | 10% |
| Debit/Credit | 70% | 10% | 5% | 15% | 15% | 5% | 5% | 5% | 5% |
| New Item | 20% | 70% | 50% | 40% | 70% | 20% | 5% | 5% | 50% |
| Pricing | 15% | 0% | 0% | 15% | 15% | 0% | 5% | 5% | 5% |
| Returns | 0% | 10% | 5% | 5% | 5% | 5% | 0% | 5% | 20% |
| Forecast | 10% | 5% | 20% | 15% | 25% | 10% | 10% | 5% | 5% |
| POS | 50% - primarily for VMI and SBT | 25% | 50% | 50% | 30% | 10% | 10% | 10% | 0% |
As you can see there are areas where most are quite strong with this penetration however there are other areas that are quite new to many Categories.
How do you compare to my findings? Are you a leader? What's your strategy against the competition?
The first week in June the annual GS1 Connect Conference. That's a great place to talk with your peers and suppliers around current and future initiatives. I hope to see you there.