When Retailers Want EDI, It’s Time for Order Automation
When retailers update their trading requirements to include EDI, the best way forward for many suppliers is system automation. This was the case for an Australian supplier of premium pet food, treats and accessories. Their existing customer had new EDI requirements...
Thrive Market Selects NetSuite Partner to Accelerate Omnichannel Growth
eCommerce merchants rely on NetSuite integration to help them manage orders and eliminate manual tasks. Recently, Thrive Market shared how adding a NetSuite partner contributed to their story of EDI integration success. Thrive Market, a membership eCommerce platform,...
3 Value-Added Benefits of NetSuite Integration with EDI
If you’ve just implemented NetSuite or are considering a new ERP system, it’s a great time to also consider your EDI needs. NetSuite is a powerful system to run your business. You can extend its capabilities by choosing a full-service EDI solution such as Fulfillment...
5 Dynamics EDI Considerations to Guide Your Move to the Cloud
Is it time to move your ERP to the cloud? Many Microsoft Dynamics businesses face this question and plan to migrate their on-premise solution to Business Central, Finance and Operations or another cloud ERP. This move will impact your EDI operations, but with proper...
How to Prepare for Drop Shipping vs. Order Fulfillment From a Warehouse
Are you a supplier that needs to meet retail order fulfillment requirements? You’ve come to the right place! In this blog, we’ll describe drop shipping vs. order fulfillment from a warehouse or distribution center. We’ll also outline typical electronic trading...
Four Strategies for Meeting Amazon’s New Seller Fulfilled Prime Requirements
About Guest Author Ruby Has Ruby Has Fulfillment is one of the fastest growing ecommerce fulfillment and logistics providers for direct-to-consumer brands and retailers. With a strategically located international footprint of distribution centers in the U.S. and...
Considerations for EDI & ERP Integration
As organizations modernize their IT infrastructure, they often want to integrate their order information with their system of record (ERP system). How can companies connect these two parts of their business without manual work? Fortunately, EDI ERP integration can...
Acumatica Innovations from SPS
Innovation doesn’t happen without people. That’s why at SPS Commerce, we have formed lasting partnerships with the teams and individuals within Acumatica. From being invited into the Acumatica MVP Program to certifying our solution on every major Acumatica version...
EDI 820: What are the Benefits of EDI Payment Order/Remittance Advice?
Surprisingly, many buying organizations (retailers and distributors) still send physical checks to their suppliers. Likewise, many organizations also print and mail the remittance detail that corresponds with these payments. Fortunately, there’s a much more efficient...
Faster Dynamics EDI Integration from SPS Commerce
When Microsoft Dynamics ERP companies looked to the future, they knew they’d require more capabilities. They needed to support their move to the cloud, eCommerce strategies and communications. Automation would bring them efficiencies and reduced errors. But, they...
Unclutter Your Desktop with Embedded EDI for Acumatica
Simplifying one’s workday begins with cutting back on the number of applications, logins and windows we need to open during the day. If you check your device, it’s likely you have at least five open applications. A recent GoTo survey of 2,000 office employees found...
How to Write Product Descriptions That Wow Customers and Boost Sales
If you’re a supplier that has been tasked with writing descriptions of your products for an online store, you may be tempted to fill out basic details and move on. But the truth is, online product descriptions are more than just a few words that describe your product. They play a key role in bringing shoppers to your product page in the first place, and they help convince shoppers to buy your product once they’ve landed there. They’re helpful discovery and sales tools that deserve a bit of strategic thinking.
Ditch the Spreadsheet, Manage All Orders in Acumatica
Spending every day flipping between Acumatica, retailer portals, emails and marketplaces to locate and process orders is in a word — chaos. Today’s suppliers are multichannel. With this comes additional orders, which is a good thing, but every channel has its own way...
A Simple Guide to Understanding the GS1-128 Barcode Label
The GS1-128 barcode (also called UCC-128 barcode) allows businesses to identify and track products as they move through the supply chain. These barcodes are used in labels applied to pallet shipments and individual cartons. GS1-128 barcode labels enable buying...
3 Important Keys to Automation in the Growth Stage of the Product Life Cycle
The growth stage of the product life cycle is where the rubber meets the road for product suppliers. Once you’ve introduced your product, you need to establish your market presence, prove your sales trajectory and improve your margins. As you enter this phase, you’ll...
EDI Software Integration Unlocks Digital Transformation Potential
In a recent study by the Economist Intelligence Unit, 72 percent of enterprises have significantly accelerated their pace of digital transformation. How does Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) fit into a digital transformation initiative? EDI considers the value of...
How to Choose an EDI Provider
Whether you are new to EDI or re-evaluating legacy systems, choosing an EDI provider can be a challenge. But finding the best fit for your business while navigating the confusing jargon has never been more important. Armed with the right information, you can find an...
EDI 214: How to Improve Shipping Using the Transportation Carrier Shipment Status Message
In today’s retail environment, shippers have no choice but to keep up with rising standards for fast delivery. As a result, visibility into shipment status is more important than ever. The EDI 214 (Transportation Carrier Shipment Status Message) is a key piece of the...
Purchase Order Changes (EDI 860): What are the Benefits for Buyers and Sellers?
The Purchase Order Change is a fundamental EDI document for improving inventory management, supply chain efficiency and financial accuracy. The Purchase Order Change is commonly known as the EDI 860. This document ensures that a final order is correct. It also helps...
How to Maximize the Advantages of Cross-Docking for Warehouse Efficiency
Receiving shipments from suppliers and moving inventory to individual stores is complex and costly. If you’re looking to optimize labor costs, maximize space utilization, leverage existing technologies, and reduce transportation costs, cross-docking is a great option....
Help Consumers Find Your Product with a Catalog Management System
When consumers shop, they need product details to find the item from their searches and to give them the confidence to choose one product over another. Product details provide the attributes that consumers look for in store and search for online. They can’t find or...
What is a 3PL Provider and How to Select One?
No matter how complex the need, there are three basic capabilities that sum up what suppliers need to get out of a 3PL: expertise, capacity and technology.
Set Your Staff Free with EDI Integration for NetSuite
What tasks do your customer service staff perform? Do they spend most days (or at least most mornings) entering wholesale or marketplace orders into Oracle NetSuite? If so, you aren’t alone. Most suppliers use their customer service teams to process customer orders....
EDI 852: Important Fundamentals of the Product Activity Report
For success in retail, it’s important to know how much inventory you have, how much you've sold and what products to bring forward next. This information can help you manage marketing dollars, improve sell-through, avoid overstocks and sidestep stockouts. The EDI 852...
7 Important Questions and Helpful Answers About GDSN Data Synchronization
High-quality product data is critical for any business that buys or sells products. Many companies we talk to want more information about product data standards, such as GDSN data synchronization. We recently sat down with product manager Scott Williams to discuss...
EDI 810: Electronic Invoices Help Automate the Payment Cycle for Buyers & Sellers
The EDI 810 is one of the most fundamental business documents in the retail supply chain. It’s the electronic invoice a seller (supplier or vendor) sends to a buyer (retailer or distributor) to request payment for the products delivered. An automated invoicing process...
2021 Retail Priorities: Looking Forward
As the Australian economy reopens and shoppers start to return to stores, it’s time a good time to reflect on some of the things that 2020 has taught us. Better yet, we need to decide where do we go from here and what our 2021 retail priorities will be. In 2021 and...
Top Five Future Retail Trends
Earlier this year, SPS Commerce released its annual industry benchmark survey, Retail Insight 2016, in conjunction with Retail Systems Research (RSR). Distributors, retailers, manufacturers and logistics firms weighed in on their outlook for 2016.
Psychology Behind Cart Abandonment and Ways to Fix It
Pretend for a moment that you’re a store manager for a grocery or retail store. As you make your way around the floor, you run into a cart all by itself with just one or two items in it. You walk a little further and find one with five products in the cart. When you...
Ask The Right Questions: Outsourced Vs In-house Vendor Portals
Web-based vendor portals are popular in Australia, particularly in the grocery sector. Retailers have told us that they are an easy way to ensure all suppliers or vendors are onboarded for electronic exchange of orders, invoices, and shipping documents (ASNs), giving...
Improve the Shipping Documentation Process with 3PL Integration
The struggle to keep up with orders has heightened as suppliers face changing retailer requirements and new order models. Most suppliers’ processes have trouble keeping up and the shipping document process is mired with manual steps. Instead, many businesses are...
EDI 846: 5 Reasons to Adopt the Inventory Inquiry/Advice
The EDI 846 Inventory Inquiry/Advice has become an essential EDI document due to growth in drop-shipping and eCommerce. This EDI document is foundational for organizations that want to expand into omnichannel retailing, which requires up-to-date inventory information....
Using the EDI 945 to Deliver Shipment Details
There are many ways third-party logistics providers (3PLs) communicate shipment details to their customers. The list includes emails, phone calls, texts and even faxes. Most 3PLs find these methods outdated and use the EDI 945 Warehouse Shipment Advice instead. It is...
The Most Eco-Friendly Shoppers in the U.S.
Social responsibility is of increasing importance to consumers. This made the research team at SPS Commerce wonder, what U.S. cities are the most eco-conscious and which eco-friendly products are trending? Thanks to Google, we can compare consumer demand data for the...
What is the EDI 940?
As a third-party logistics provider (3PL), you’ve likely been in conversations about customers using or requiring the EDI 940. But what is it? And why do you need it? In its most basic form, it is an electronic version of an order from your customer. In fact, whenever...
4 Unexpected Benefits of the EDI 850 for Buyers and Sellers
The most crucial step in the retail supply chain is sending and receiving purchase orders. However, our retail experts discovered this document tends to be the most inefficient and difficult to maintain within supply chains. Why? Too many businesses are using email,...
How to Do Drop Shipping: 3 Keys for Retailers
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, eCommerce sales soared to over 16 percent of total retail sales in 2020. The growth in eCommerce sales has accelerated interest in drop shipping and other forms of eCommerce fulfillment. The concept of drop shipping is simple....
The 3 Truths of Product Data Management Components
Online shoppers expect comprehensive product information before they will consider making a purchase. If products have limited or blurry images, missing item details, or the descriptions aren’t engaging, a competitor is just a click away. eCommerce retailers know this...
5 Secrets to a Successful ERP Implementation
This time of year, businesses often consider deploying new systems — including enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Considering a new ERP implementation? These 5 strategies will help everything run smoothly within your company and with your customers: Plan for...
Three Common Supplier Onboarding Challenges & How to Solve Them
To satisfy the needs of today’s consumers, buying organizations need to continuously add new products to their assortment. And they need suppliers to fulfill these products as fast as possible. But getting new suppliers ready to fulfill your orders isn’t as easy as it...
Why Merchandising Matters for Suppliers
To succeed in retail, companies need focus, market position, and a strategy to win customers and move products. That’s the importance of merchandising in a nutshell. Retail merchandisers think of themselves as curators at a museum. A curator doesn’t just amass a...
What EDI Automation Looks Like in 2021: An SPS ON>Conversation
“Automation is the name of the game” according to Paul Mann, Director of EDI and Integration at Poo~Pourri, and the audience’s consensus was that he was right. At a recent SPS Commerce ON>Conversation, Oracle NetSuite and SPS experts spoke with Mann and Jarod...
Order Automation: The Easy (and Effective) Way
When your business is experiencing high volumes of retail orders and purchase orders with hundreds of line items, order automation isn’t just a requirement. It’s a lifeline. This was the situation that OZtrail found themselves in. Recently acquired by Adventure...
How Purchase Order Acknowledgements Can Transform Your Supply Chain
With the growth of eCommerce and omnichannel shopping, fulfilling orders has become increasingly complex. This makes communication between buyers and sellers more important than ever, particularly when it comes to exchanging information about the status of orders....
The Power of Netflix on Consumer Behavior
Part of the attraction to Netflix is that consumers feel like they aren’t bombarded with advertising. While that is true, the reality is that whatever you watch on Netflix, it’s still having a significant impact on your consumer behavior. We are all guilty of binge...
Choosing EDI Software Over Vendor Portals
Ask any Australia supplier, and they know have a business decision if they sell through national retailers. They have to access orders from a retailer’s vendor portal or invest in EDI software. Yes, vendor portals are free. But as the saying goes, there is no such...
How to Never Miss Retailer P.O. Acknowledgement Expectations
Purchase order acknowledgements, also known as EDI 855 documents, communicate your intent to fulfill an order to a retail customer. Retailer expectations for lightning-fast purchase order acknowledgements can be daunting, but the latest automation technology makes the...
Be Ready All Stages of Business Growth with EDI, Xero & SPS
The No Nasties Project was founded a little over two years ago. Today, the supplier has sold more than 30 million Sugar Free-zies stix across Australia. No Nasties evolved from a start-up in 2018 to a nationally recognized brand by 2020. Their staff know how the...
Product Forecasting for 2021 and Beyond
With all the change and uncertainty in the market this year, many customers have asked us for advice on how to plan for 2021. Companies are finding that 2021 planning is particularly challenging because they can’t use historical data in the same way they have in the...
A Guide to eCommerce Fulfillment for Retailers & Distributors
According to a recent study, 63 percent of consumers expect to continue to do more online shopping, even after the pandemic. The acceleration of eCommerce also has massive implications for how retailers and distributors fulfill orders. Yet fulfilling eCommerce orders...
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