Improving Item Accuracy

Retail mandates are flooding manufacturers and suppliers from all directions -- whether it's stringent customer service requirements or compliance with set-in-place business rules. Minimizing order errors and optimizing inventory to ensure "right product, right time, right place" are competitive differentiators for retailers and suppliers. As a result, data synchronization -- the ability to share clean, accurate and precise data, with minimal time investment -- is becoming a top-of-mind priority for both parties.

The Mandate Pickle
Home improvement product maker Thermwell soon found itself caught in the mandate pickle. The company manufactures more than 3,000 home improvement items, most notably water heater blankets, air conditioners and insulation tape. Its products line the shelves of home improvement stores worldwide.

As the company won more business from major retailers and expanded its diverse product portfolio, it found that many of its largest customers -- leading big-box retailers -- had strict data synchronization mandates in place to ensure standardized product data and streamlined processes. However, data sync was a relatively new concept for the team, which was primarily used to meet EDI-driven mandates.

"We viewed item maintenance not as a process but as a task," says Jeff Adler, vice president of IT, Thermwell. "With the advent of data synchronization it became more embedded in the process of our business."

When a new Thermwell product was introduced, it was typically an arduous process to define all of the product attributes including dimensions, weight, materials and artwork. To retain its most precious business, Thermwell was under intense pressure to devise a fast path to continuously update, manage and publish item information with all of its customers.

The Thermwell team needed a solution that would allow them to achieve these goals, seamlessly hook up with retailers and ensure the full integrity of current processes, including its existing UCCnet and Data Secure technologies.

Sealing In A Solution
To enhance product information flow and automate collaboration among critical partners, Thermwell partnered with nuBridges. After exploring many solution providers, Thermwell was impressed by nuBridges' proven success in implementing solutions for shared customers -- including Lowe's and Home Depot.
"We embedded nuBridges within our ERP system to make the data sync process as seamless as possible," explains Adler. "Now, when a new product is created, we have all of the mechanisms in place to find all of the things that data sync needed through the nuBridges tool."

Adler says nuBridges offered the most comprehensive, user-friendly solution for data synchronization, including real-time data sync, integration with internal enterprise applications, non-duplicate data entry, workflow and real-time notification. Its flexibility accommodates multiple users and organizations and unlimited data changes; ERP adapters and data pool agnostic tools deliver rapid implementation on a cost-effective basis.

Adler and his team also created a global item master, a bridge between "what the world thinks we have and what we think we have." By using truExchange Item Sync Supply from nuBridges, Thermwell is able to fully integrate and expand the capabilities of its existing ERP applications and UCCnet system. Averaging several hundred items per week, Thermwell simply posts its product information to the data pool of its choice as well as any ongoing changes into its existing ERP systems' product master file that automatically populates the data pool without additional steps.

Adler says he is currently knee-deep in created a data sync department at Thermwell, so that the process becomes its own entity. "Eventually, someone other than myself will have to be the owner of the data sync project," says Adler. "It's an important job because data sync at Thermwell involves service, sales and management."

Power In Place
With nuBridges best-in-class solution, Thermwell automated key business processes, streamlined comprehensive data exchange, maximized bottom-line savings and more importantly -- proactively took control of its relationships with key retailers.

Of equal value, it received a solution that allowed quick data sync implementation for its full 3,000-itemed product line, while ensuring existing business rules and processes remained firmly in place.

As Thermwell continues to expand its product selection and customer base, the added visibility and flexibility throughout the supply chain will help them get products to market faster, and deal with unpredictable changes more effectively.

Thermwell now has the power to unleash cleaner and more accurate product information, preventing the common charge backs, incorrect orders and outdated products that heavily jeopardize relationships with retailers.

Overall, nuBridges' solution not only fully satisfied all industry mandates, but also continues to serve as a foundation for future data exchange initiatives.
"We want to be perceived as a world class supplier by our retail partners," says Adler. "Our customers drove the demand and we want to satisfy that demand. It's a key driver for us."