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Welcome to the Winter 2008
edition of the Datalliance Newsletter
The end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008 has been a very busy time at Datalliance. As you will see from the press announcement below, 2007 was another successful year for our Datalliance VMI service. Our customer locations grew 242% and our SKU's managed increased 36% year-over-year from 2006. These are very impressive metrics and illustrate the value that our customers are realizing from their VMI implementations. This growth was a healthy balance between existing customers expanding their VMI programs and new customers implementing VMI for the first time. We've also noted below our substantial growth in the electrical industry over the past few years. Since 2003 we have expanded the number of electrical suppliers using Datalliance from 4 to 18. We are very proud of these growth trends and will continue to work with all of our customers to help them realize the business benefits of VMI. Also in this newsletter you'll see announcements regarding our new website and a new webinar based VMI education program that is being developed and launched by our Customer Care department. We are very excited about both of these announcements as they reinforce our ongoing effort to support our customers. Our new website (www.datalliance.com) has a wealth of information about VMI and the new education program provides a cost-effective approach to offer insight into a variety of VMI topics. Both of these new resources help us share our VMI knowledge with our customers to allow them to get the most out of their VMI programs. We were fortunate to be mentioned, along with SKF (Datalliance customer), in a recent research article by AMR Research as an example of a successful VMI implementation. The highlights of our mention in this report are covered below. As always, we have an update from our Operations/Data Center group and a "Customer Care Tip" from the Customer Care group. 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. We look forward to an exciting year in 2008! Carl
Hall News & Announcements Datalliance Launches New Vendor Managed Inventory Website The new website can be found at: www.datalliance.com. Datalliance announced the launch of a new website - www.datalliance.com. In addition to detailed information about the Datalliance VMI service and Datalliance the company, the new site contains extensive information and resources about the process of Vendor Managed Inventory. Information on how VMI works, business benefits for customers and suppliers, keys to a successful VMI implementation, and answers to common concerns are provided for companies interested in learning about and implementing VMI… Please click here to read the entire article. Datalliance Delivers New Vendor Managed Inventory Education Program New program to feature ongoing
series of educational topics, delivered
via webinar format. Datalliance announced a new Customer Care program to provide educational sessions covering a broad range of Vendor Managed Inventory topics. In this ongoing series, Datalliance industry and technology experts will share their knowledge and experience to help customers get the most out of their VMI implementation. This information will help customers take maximum advantage of the Datalliance functionality. The new program, delivered via webinar format, is available to all Datalliance VMI customers at no cost. Sessions will be offered at least quarterly and will be archived for future "on demand" reference via the Datalliance website… Please click here to read the entire article. Datalliance Delivers New Release of Vendor Managed Inventory Service New release focuses on enhancing planner productivity, exception handling, and reporting capabilities. Datalliance announced the immediate availability of the latest release of the Datalliance VMI service. Enhancements in this latest release help the planner to be more productive and efficient in their order review process, fine tune exception reporting capabilities, and increase location grouping reporting ease of use and functionality. The Datalliance VMI service is delivered as a managed service via the Internet using the 'Software as a Service' (SaaS) model. Datalliance makes it easy for suppliers and their customers to fully align business objectives, improve collaboration, and streamline supply chain operations… Please click here to read the entire article. Datalliance and SKF Prominently Mentioned in AMR Research Report on Multi-Enterprise Collaboration Published in December 2007, an AMR Research report titled "Multi-Enterprise Collaboration: Are You Creating Collaborative Relationships or Developing Collaborative Practices?", prominently mentions Datalliance and uses SKF (Datalliance customer) as an example of a successful VMI implementation. The objective of the report is to better define what is meant by the term "collaboration". The report provides collaboration insights, with a focus on building collaborative relationships that use collaborative practices as building blocks. The bottom line message of the report is that collaborative practices yield short-term results, but collaborative relationships drive sustainable value. The report identifies the turnkey SaaS VMI approach employed by Datalliance as a way for suppliers to offload technology and data constraints that are inherent in a traditional VMI software implementation. The report makes the following comments, "Through this service (Datalliance), SKF offloaded the cost of customer communication, file synchronization, data analysis, and system maintenance. Datalliance also handled elements of SKF's planning and maintenance algorithms where it had expertise because of its VMI experience. But most important to SKF was the improvement in key account relationships, which led to increased market share. SKF customers reaped benefits, since the VMI program reduced their need to plan by over 50% as well as their inventories (in one example by half). The program also helped improve inventory turns to double the market average of 3.2. So important this is to SKF that VMI is included in sales incentive plans." For a copy of this article contact Datalliance at info@datalliance.com or call 513-791-7272. Datalliance VMI Growth in Electrical Industry Electrical Suppliers using
Datalliance has grown from 4 in 2003 to 18
in 2007. Between 2003 and 2007, Datalliance has expanded the number of electrical suppliers using VMI from 4 to 18. Many of these new customers initially tried to do VMI on their own or implemented a traditional software application. With the continued evolution of Datalliance and the Software as a Service (SaaS) model, these suppliers now have an easier, quicker and more cost-effective option to realize the benefits of VMI. Datalliance expects this growth trend to continue and looks forward to future opportunities in the Electrical industry. Updates Datalliance Operations/Data Center Update Since our last newsletter, we have made two significant additions to the Datalliance Operations and Data Center function. The first addition is a new staff member to our group. We are fortunate to have Liam Dolan join our operations staff. His technical skills are a valuable resource as we continue to make the changes necessary to accommodate our continued customer growth. This growth has allowed us to make significant upgrades to our Datalliance server and data storage. In early January, the operations group, with significant assistance from our development staff, successfully installed a new IBM System P server and approximately 2 terabytes of new disk drives. This new hardware completely replaces our previous Datalliance server and its disk storage system, increasing our capacity by 250% to support anticipated future growth. The new system provides the following advantages.
Customer Care Tip Item Exceptions & the New Details Exception Page With the last two releases, extended functionality was added to assist Suppliers in managing exceptions at the Location/item level. But you may be asking yourself why you should care? The reality is that, in the past, Suppliers were managing Location/Item exceptions with manually maintained 'lists'. If you have found yourself maintaining long lists of 'exceptions' for a Distributor, the newly added Item Details Exceptions page is your answer to telling the system to treat an item at the Location level in some special way so that you don't have to manually review your 'list' to make sure you do what your Distributor wants. The Exceptions page has valuable features that will allow a Supplier to manage additional exceptions at the Location/Item level more effectively and hopefully toss those manually maintained lists where they belong, in the trash can (umm, recycling bin). Please click here to read the entire article. Events Webinars Customer Care Education Series The first webinar in this series will be held on Wednesday, March 5, 2008 at 2pm EST. The topic will be Order Point (OP) Management: overview and op/demand spikes category review. For questions about this session or to reserve your place, please reply to info@datalliance.com. VMI 101 - An Introduction to Vendor Managed Inventory 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 March 10, 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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