A recent shared strategy study titled “The State of Collaboration 2005”, by Consumer Goods Technology, RIS, and Forrester, sited some encouraging results our team felt needed to be shared.  read the study

Finding #1: almost two-thirds of retailers and manufacturers feel they suffer adverse business effects when they do not collaborate.

Finding #2: EDI 852 is still the primary tool most firms use to collaborate.

Our conversations with manufacturers indicates they are having a hard time dealing with the EDI 852 data provided by retailers.  Plus many retailers have developed web portals which provide data files in even different formats.  There are simply too many different formats, and too much data to wade through on a weekly basis.  This points to the need for a tool to make the most of the opportunity.

Still, this is good news to see momentum continues to grow.