Datalliance Further Enhances Vendor Managed Inventory

CINCINNATI, OH--(Marketwired - Jun 11, 2015) - Datalliance today announced immediate availability of the latest release of the cloud-based Datalliance Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) platform with a number of important new capabilities. Enhancements were driven by feedback from the global user community combined with Datalliance vision for the continued evolution of the VMI process. New capabilities are available for immediate use by Datalliance VMI customers and their trading partners at no cost, and with no need to install or upgrade software. Datalliance delivers enhancement releases three times per year, with 45+ releases having been delivered to date. 

Enhancements in this release are primarily focused on increased VMI analyst productivity, continued refinement of the overall user experience, and the addition of new capabilities in the areas of order management, forecast handling, truck building and distributor communications. Highlights include:

• An enhanced 'PO Worksheet' screen which will have a significant impact on VMI analyst productivity in many environments. An innovative design approach has been used to deliver nearly 4 times more information within an item-specific viewing area that can be personalized to the specific needs of individual planners. 
• Enhanced 'external forecast' capabilities that will help the VMI analyst make more use of supplemental forecasts increasingly being provided by retailers. The Analyst can now toggle between the system calculated forecast and an external forecast, see the impact on replenishment orders, decide which will provide the best results, and apply that forecast to an individual or multiple items. 
• Further enhanced truck building capabilities that enable optimized shipments to be built using multiple constraints (e.g. cube, weight, pallets, footprints, etc.). In addition, the system now enables configuration of 'custom trucks' for purposes of shipment building. This valuable capability can be used for a number of purposes, such as shipping via a combination of truck sizes (as is often done in Europe) or as an alternative way to combine VMI and non-VMI orders into a single shipment.
• Distributor Web Portal enhancements that extend system-generated location transfer capabilities. Distributors can now interactively view suggested transfers at any time and generate output files to automatically update their internal business systems with those transfer orders while also notifying the supplier that the transfers will be taking place so replenishment orders can be appropriately adjusted.
• Numerous other functional and ease-of-use enhancements in the areas of order building, returns automation, depot cross-dock order handling, event handling, alert handling and online help availability.

As with every release, a number of general technical and performance enhancements are also included to further support overall system scalability, reliability and availability.  

About Datalliance
Datalliance is the world's largest independent Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) service provider. Delivered as a cloud-based platform backed by extensive customer service, Datalliance VMI makes it easy for suppliers and their customers to establish sales and inventory management relationships that fully align business objectives, improve collaboration, and streamline supply chain operations. Datalliance manages billions of dollars in orders, millions of SKUs, and thousands of locations worldwide for leading companies in consumer, industrial and healthcare markets. For more information about Datalliance, visit www.datalliance.com.