Retail trading partner portals have been creating somewhat of a buzz lately. We happened to read an article in the current issue of the Journal of Trading Partner Practices titled, "Using Portals to Improve Collaboration." Not surprisingly we have been receiving allot of questions from vendors regarding the challenges they face in managing trading partner portals.

Just in the past two weeks vendors have called to asked questions about trading partner portals for; Wal-Mart, Target, JC Penney, Goody's, Lowes, Home Depot, and Walgreens.

The stated objective of retail trading partner portals is to create a more open and collaborative relationship between the retailer and their vendors by sharing POS activity and other important documents. The expectation is that open communication will improve sell-thru and in-stock. But unfortunately the proprietary nature of the portals is greatly limiting their effectiveness.

One of our vendor customers has more than two dozen retail customers. Among those retail customers about two-thirds have a trading partner portal so this vendor must log-on to more than a dozen different websites each day to analyze POS and conduct other critical business. This is very time consuming and inefficient. For this vendor, and many more like them, these portals have quickly become a huge drain on their staff time and efficiency.

What are some of the issues with trading partner portals? Each portal is different so vendors must learn the in's and out's of each. Data format and availability is different for each portal. The data available in the portal is often different than the data available in EDI 852. e.g. some retailers only report dollars sold within a portal. Many retailers do not permit 3rd parties supporting the vendors to have access to the portal. This is discourages a vendor from seeking out category management and data analysis assistance they may not have in-house. The data available within the portal is often very different than the data sent via EDI 852. We have seen large variations in units on-hand reported for an item.

What's wrong with EDI 852? EDI was created many years ago to standardize the format and transmission of data between trading partners. In other words, it was designed to eliminate the proprietary ways of doing things (think trading partner portal) and get everyone within the supply chain onto one single framework. EDI has limitations but at least it provides a consistent and universally acceptable means of transmitting data.

Come back for part II in our series - What are portals good for?

And part III - Achieving a single sign-on for all your trading partner portals.

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