Datalliance VMI Forum Focuses on Innovative Thinking in Vendor Managed Inventory

CINCINNATI, OH--(Marketwired - May 28, 2013) - This year's Datalliance VMI Forum, the world's largest annual cross-industry gathering focused entirely on the topic of Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI), attracted over 130 attendees from a wide range of consumer, industrial and healthcare industry segments. Attendees included representatives from suppliers, wholesale distributors and retailers. Held May 13-15 in Cincinnati, Ohio, the Forum focused on innovative thinking across many aspects of VMI. 

The Forum's program featured presentations from VMI Program Managers at AGCO and Goodyear/Veyance, a "retailer's perspective" session with Larry Binkowski, recently retired Director of Grocery Procurement at Kroger Company, and a workshop on Innovation Engineering presented by Maggie Nichols, COO of Eureka! Ranch. 

The program included industry breakout sessions for consumer packaged goods and industrial products. Management and user tracks addressed topics such as VMI Analytics, sustaining VMI success, a look at how VMI has grown over the years and the social impact of VMI. A combined supplier/distributor panel discussion included representatives from Harmon HVS, Kirby Risk Electrical Supply, Hoffman and Meritor. Interactive solution direction and user feedback sessions provided an opportunity for informative discussion about exciting new capabilities planned for the future of Datalliance VMI. On the lighter side, the program included an entertaining presentation about the underground history of Cincinnati and attendees were treated to wide open vistas of the Ohio River at the featured evening event.

In the Datalliance company update, CEO Carl Hall shared the fact that Datalliance is now managing 18.8 million SKUs, a 21% increase in just the last year. He discussed the company's many on-going activities designed to deliver great inventory management capabilities and highly responsive customer care with industry-leading reliability, productivity and reporting. He also outlined the company's progress over the past year in building European operations, including the opening of an office in Brussels and the addition of new full-time employees. 

"The fundamentals of VMI are well-proven and widely utilized today," said Hall, "But we are working to build even more value around those core processes and to extend the ways in which companies can leverage the wealth of information that is being continually collected by VMI. We also continue to work at taking the benefits of VMI to a wider range of industries. The interaction among trading partners and across different industries that occurs during this Forum is an important part of discovering new ideas and maintaining that momentum."

About Datalliance
Datalliance is a leading provider of collaborative commerce services, and the world's largest independent VMI service provider. Delivered via the Internet using the 'Software as a Service' (SaaS) model, Datalliance solutions make 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 for leading Fortune 1000 companies in a number of industries. For more information about Datalliance, visit www.datalliance.com.