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Welcome to the Spring 2008
edition of the Datalliance Newsletter
I am pleased to report that Vendor Managed Inventory in general, and our Datalliance VMI service in particular, remain very successful in the marketplace. We continue to add new customers in our selected target markets, expand the Datalliance staff, enhance the services to help ensure our customer’s success, and enhance the Datalliance application functionality and data center operations. But most importantly, our customers continue to realize significant business benefits from VMI. In a recent article in Aftermarket Business, Datalliance customer SKF and two of their distributors, AB&S and Page Brake Warehouse, were featured in an article on the success of VMI in the auto parts industry. Our feature story in this edition of the newsletter discusses how Midway Truck Parts has used VMI to improve key business metrics. I encourage you to read this entire article on one of the leading truck parts distributors. In the "News" section below you will see press releases announcing new Datalliance customers. An individual press release announce Champion Laboratories as a new Datalliance customer in the automotive and heavy-duty industries. In the electrical industry, we recently announced the addition of Eaton, Kidde, Lithonia Lighting, Ortronics, Siemon, and TayMac as new Datalliance customers. All of the above companies are industry leaders and we welcome them to the Datalliance service. We’ve been busy within Datalliance making sure that Datalliance continues to be the premier VMI service available in the market. To do so we have added five new people to our staff, enhanced VMI functionality through our regular upgrade process, made significant upgrades to our data center’s disaster recovery and business continuity capabilities, and introduced a new VMI education program for our customers. Details on all of these topics are included in this newsletter. I encourage you to continue to provide us with input on topics for future editions of this newsletter. Please feel free to contact me at carl@datalliance.com with your ideas and suggestions. Please visit www.datalliance.com for more information on Vendor Managed Inventory and Datalliance. Carl
Hall Feature Article Midway Truck Parts Improves Business Results and Supplier Relationships with VMI Midway Truck Parts, a leading distributor of heavy duty truck parts, has realized significant business benefits as a result of their successful implementation of Datalliance Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI). Midway’s business challenge was to better anticipate customer needs, stock appropriate parts at quantities to meet demand levels, replenish stock in a timely manner, and minimize inventory investment to support a positive bottom line. Business Results Midway has realized business results in several areas after using Datalliance VMI with SKF, one of Midway’s primary suppliers. Roger Egeland, Product Manager, Midway Truck Parts, said "One of our biggest VMI benefits is improved customer service. Since implementing VMI, our out-of-stocks have decreased 64%! That’s a significant improvement that tells us we now have the right products on the shelf. Our VMI orders are more accurate and timely. The confidence level of both our counter workers and our customers has risen. As a result of this increased confidence, demand for SKF products over this time period has increased 32% and sales dollar volume 10%. VMI gives us the information to fine tune our product mix. These impressive bottom line results are directly related to VMI and our improved customer service and inventory management capabilities." From an inventory management and replenishment perspective, VMI has helped Midway increase inventory turns resulting in improved cash flow. "Since moving to VMI, our inventory turns have improved 10%," explained Egeland. "Now that our product mix more accurately reflects customer demand, inventory is turning over quicker, a change which results in an increase in cash flow and a decrease in carrying costs. Datalliance VMI also recognizes what parts are potentially obsolete which allows us to return those parts and remove them from our inventory." Major Supplier Recommends VMI SKF, one of Midway’s primary suppliers, approached Midway and encouraged them to participate in their Vendor Managed Inventory program. SKF wanted to enhance their relationship with Midway by using VMI to help manage their inventory replenishment process. "SKF has used VMI with great success for many years," stated Dennis Osiecki, SKF Regional Manager. "We were confident that Midway and SKF could mutually benefit by utilizing the Datalliance VMI service. The results that Midway has achieved in increased sales, reduced stockouts, and increased inventory turns says it all." Please click here to read the entire article. News & Announcements Datalliance Continues Leadership Role in Electrical Industry Eaton, Kidde, Lithonia Lighting, Ortronics, Siemon, and TayMac select Datalliance Datalliance announced that in recent months, six more leading electrical industry suppliers selected Datalliance for Vendor Managed Inventory and related collaborative applications. Tom Hoar, Director of Electrical Industry Sales, Datalliance stated, “With these suppliers coming on board in recent months, we now have 19 leading electrical suppliers using Datalliance. Our ability to deliver Datalliance as a managed service via the Internet was an important factor for all these suppliers. The Software as a Service model allows our customers to deploy and realize the business benefits of Datalliance quickly while providing a predictable total cost of ownership.” Please click here to read the entire article. Datalliance VMI Grows in Auto Industry Manufacturer SKF, and Distributors AB&S Warehouse and Page Brake Warehouse Share Benefits of VMI in Aftermarket Business. In a recent article in Aftermarket Business, Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) was identified as a growing practice in the auto parts industry. Led by early adopters in the heavy duty area, the article points out that suppliers and distributors across all segments of the auto industry are now realizing the business benefits associated with VMI. SKF (supplier) and AB&S and Page Brake Warehouse (distributors) are several of the Datalliance VMI users that are featured in this article. Brian Cantagallo, Operations Manager at AB&S Warehouse, states in the article, "We’ve cut inventory costs and increased sales since using VMI. We have over 50 vendors we have to deal with, so when you have one vendor that’s going to step up and take the cost out (of managing inventory), it’s one less thing to worry about." Craig Young, Director of Information Systems at SKF, discussed the benefits to suppliers by saying, "It (VMI) increases sales for our customers because they now have the right product on hand. Even carrying more products, it actually reduces the inventory dollars. I’ve been in this industry for a long time, and everybody talks about a win-win situation. VMI is actually the first and, so far, the only application that has lived up to the hype." Please click here to read the entire article. Champion Laboratories Selects Datalliance for Automotive/Heavy-Duty VMI Solution Datalliance VMI selected as proven leader in automotive/heavy-duty industry Datalliance announced that Champion Laboratories, Inc. has selected the Datalliance Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) service. Champion Laboratories is one of the world’s largest suppliers of filters, filtration products, and related services. The company’s Luber-finer brand is a recognized leader serving the heavy-duty industry with a wide range of engine and cooling system filters. Scott Simmonds, Director of Luber-finer sales, stated, “Several of our key customers recommended that we consider vendor managed inventory as they have realized significant value from VMI programs that they are currently involved in. We see VMI as an excellent tool to help us get even closer to our largest customers and improve upon our industry leading service standards. After evaluating a wide range of VMI options, we selected Datalliance as they are the clear leaders in VMI for the automotive and heavy-duty industries. Their Software-as-a-Service model will allow is to get up and running in the shortest amount of time.” Please click here to read the entire article. Datalliance Expands Corporate Staff to Support Growth Over the past several months we have expanded our corporate staff to ensure that we have the resources to effectively support our growing customer base. We are pleased to announce the following new employees:
We are continuing to look for quality people to join our team. Plese check our Career Opportunities page to see our open positions. First Two VMI Education Webinars Gain High Marks from Customers In February, Datalliance announced a new webinar education program for Datalliance customers. The objective of this program is to have Datalliance industry and technology experts share their knowledge and experience to help customers get the most out of their VMI implementation. To date, there have been two sessions conducted:
Both of these programs were rated very favorably with customer participants. The average scores for both sessions on several key evaluation questions were as follows:
To learn more about all of our upcoming Webinars please visit our website. Updates Datalliance Operations/Data Center Update In the first quarter of 2008, the Datalliance Operations Group completed two substantial enhancements to further enhance the reliability, security and capacity of our data center infrastructure. Redundant Hardware Investment Early in the quarter, we made a significant investment in redundant hardware to duplicate the capacity of the enhanced production systems that we installed towards the end of 2007. The software installation was customized to mirror our production environment. Once completed, we tested the new environment to ensure it was stable and that all functionality was running properly. We continually test the redundant system to ensure a seamless transition in the event the system is needed. Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Enhancements In the middle of the first quarter we installed redundant hardware at a hardened collocation facility to provide disaster recovery and business continuity capabilities for our production systems. This permanent, in-house facility provides numerous upgrades to our ability to ensure business continuity in the event that we need to execute our disaster recovery plan. With our new warm-site we have a duplicate production facility that requires minimal time and effort, allowing us to react quickly to any situation. To guard against any disruption in electrical power, the new facility overlaps two power grids, has site wide UPS, and multiple backup generators. In addition to the electrical power considerations, the facility also has built-in safeguards and procedures for dealing with natural disasters such as tornados and earthquakes. Both of these projects culminated with our annual Business Continuity Test in late March. We are pleased to report that we exceeded all of our objectives for both time-to-recovery and recovery points. The new business continuity systems provide an extra measure of assurance to our customers that the data hosted on our systems will remain secure, reliable, and available. Finally, we are happy to announce that Liam Dolan has joined the team in a leadership role. Liam brings significant technical and planning experience to the group. His addition expands our technical capabilities and provides enhanced planning and project management skills to the Operations group. Customer Care Tip Increasing the Efficiency of Exception Driven PO Worksheet Reviews We continue to update the Datalliance® offering to increase the value of the service provided to our customers. With the April 2008 release, extended functionality was added to help increase the efficiency and effectiveness of VMI Planners during their PO Worksheet reviews. During the PO Worksheet review process, we want to continue to assist the VMI Planner to be exception driven. This means focusing only on those items that are associated with one or more Alerts. You will want to click on the link below if you have:
The enhancements outlined in the PDF were added based on customer feedback, with the express intent of increasing Planner efficiency in the review of Alerts. Please click here to read the entire article. Events Webinars Customer Care Education Series The fourth webinar in this series will be held on Wednesday, August 6 at 2:00 p.m. EST. The topic will be OP Management: Expiring Overrides and Min/Max OP. For questions about this session or to reserve your place, please reply to info@datalliance.com. VMI Basics Datalliance will host a series of free web based seminars or "webinars" to acquaint people with the fundamentals of Vendor Managed Inventory. The sessions will be suitable for all audiences from both suppliers and their customers. The webinars will answer the following questions:
These webinars are presented by Datalliance Staff and are open to the public. This session is scheduled for June 16, 2008 at 2:00 PM EST. For questions about this session or to reserve your place, please reply to info@datalliance.com. Industry Events Throughout the course of the year, Datalliance participates in a variety of industry conferences, seminars, and trade shows. Listed below is a schedule of events for the coming months. If you are planning on attending any of these events, be sure to look for Datalliance.
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