Well, we’re at the end of the first quarter of 2011. The economy is looking better. You’ve got your 2011 projects underway. For many of you, you read a few of my articles in the last 4 -5 months and have decided that one of the projects would be add more suppliers to your Electronic Trading program, add another transaction to your library of EDI documents. Or maybe you’ve committed to management that you’ll support a new method of orders or distribution, such as Factory Direct or Cross Dock. Now you’ve realized “how am I going to get this done?”

There’s been quite a bit of talk about trading partners providing Point of Sale information with their suppliers. So what is POS and why is it important? There are there are several ways that POS data is used -

For years we’ve been aware of Manufacturing Companies implementing LEAN initiatives. Those same concepts were looked at for the Retail industry over the last 5 years, and companies were building out teams that were tasked with looking within their organization to improve the customer experience and provide better value through the elimination of waste. These days those same principles are being used, but many organizations are taking the concept future through “Green” initiatives.