Datalliance Annual Forum.

CINCINNATI -- Datalliance

--Datalliance VMI community meets to share successes and learn how to further leverage their VMI investment.

Datalliance recently held its annual Customer Forum at the Cincinnati Marriott at Rivercenter. Program highlights for the two-day program included a keynote presentation titled VMI's Financial Impact on Distribution (Larry Mohr, The FW Webb Company), Supplier & Distributor Panels, National Economic Outlook (George Vredeveld, University of Cincinnati), and Supply Chain Collaboration (Brian Malloy, CHEP USA).

Keynote Speaker

Larry Mohr, Senior VP of IT, FW Webb, explained the financial impact that VMI has had on his company, "VMI has meant significant improvement in turns, operating costs and net income. With cost of goods sold improvements of 1.8 to 2.2%, we are aggressively trying to add suppliers. We have 67 branches. The result of our current VMI effort is like having an additional, extra large and profitable branch."

Supplier Panel Discussion

The Supplier Panel included Craig Young, Director of Aftermarket Systems, SKF, Ron Doxsee, Director of IT, Grote Industries, and Matt Tapling, VMI/CPFR Manager, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. Commenting on his company's initial VMI implementation experience, Matt Tapling noted, "We turned to Datalliance and they helped us through the initial startup in a relatively short amount of time and have continued to support us with minimal assistance from our internal IT staff."

Distributor Panel Discussion

Erach Balsara, CIO, Fleetpride, Marilee Anderson, E Business Coordinator, Kirby Risk Electrical Supply, and Rick Turner, VMI Program Coordinator, Graybar Electric Company, participated in the Distributor Panel. "The most important factor in a successful VMI initiative is trust between the distributor and the supplier," said Erach Balsara. "Based on our experience, we'd like more of our suppliers to offer VMI programs. We have seen all of our key metrics such as inventory turns, stockouts, and returns improve as a result of VMI." Rick Turner added, "Our VMI inventory metric performance exceeds our overall performance. We'd like our strategic suppliers to embrace this concept, make it an integral part of their business and have VMI serve as the foundation of our mutual growth."

About Datalliance

Datalliance is a Software as a Service (SaaS) company focused exclusively on vendor managed inventory. Datalliance enables suppliers and their customers to establish effective VMI relationships quickly and easily as well as facilitating collaboration across the Internet. Datalliance customers include companies such as: Philips, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, and SKF. For more information about Datalliance and VMI, please visit: http://www.datalliance.com.