January 2003

One of Britain's foremost home shopping companies, Littlewoods, has taken a significant step away from traditional EDI in its dealings with suppliers, substituting a more advanced and finely-targeted trading platform.

It has chosen MTX-Trade (Moving Technology eXchange), an Internet-based supply-chain execution and event management toolset from software house Kewill, and will be using this to integrate its information system with those of 250 European suppliers.

MTX-Trade aims to enhance the control and management of the order lifecycle with third-party suppliers and transport providers. Littlewoods plans to use it to link its suppliers directly with its customer service centres and its merchandising department, achieving better visibility of business-critical data.

The new system will replace a well-etablished DOS-based application and EDI infrastructure, which is described as "extremely inflexible and unreliable at times". Besides improving real-time accessibility to information and reducing manual processing, the change is expected to allow more flexibility and automation in dealings with the company's supplier community.

Littlewoods is expecting the system to provide greater transparency of information from the supplier community, and therefore to help reduce cancellations, returns and claims, as well as promoting a more efficient and cost-effective method of communicating.

There should be direct benefits in customer relations, since call-centre operatives will have real-time visibility of order and stock status information, which currently relies on manual processing and batch data transfers.

New suppliers also stand to benefit. At the moment it takes four to six weeks to integrate them with the Littlewoods community, but that lead time is expected to fall significantly.

MTX-Trade Direct Despatch is targeted specifically at the home shopping industry. It is available as both a hosted and licensed solution; in the case of Littlewoods, it will be hosted by Kewill in Manchester.

Analysts have long been predicting a drift to the Internet from "traditional" EDI, which transmits trading communications via substantial global networks, using well-established message protocols. Littlewoods is one of the biggest users to make an across-the-board switch of this kind. Sister-company Littlewoods Retail recently made an online document access system available to 2,000 suppliers (e.logistics Magazine, issue 24).

as Debenhams launches private portal

Retailer Debenhams is rolling out a private business-to-business portal for managing relationships with its international supplier base. Initially it will be used for ordering and logistics functions, and eventually it will be extended to cover all the company's external partners (over 700), including logistics providers.

According to Martin Wyke, the company's information systems director: "There are enormous benefits to be gained from having complete visibility of our global supply chain."

Debehams has chosen Eqos to provide the portal. Eqos already works in the fast-moving consumer goods and retail grocery sectors, but this will be its first department store portal.

The initial phase will provide visibility, alerts and exception management for Debenhams' buyers, merchandisers, distribution centre personnel and suppliers.

The solution will cover the delivery and tracking of purchase orders by Debenhams, the issuing of advanced shipping notices (ASNs) by suppliers - plus further ASNs from third-party carriers. This feature is said to be unique to the system.

Debenhams turns over £1.6 billion. It has 100 stores in the UK and 10 international franchise stores, and has also made significant inroads into multi-channel operations; it has a fully transactional Web site and a comprehensive home shopping catalogue - Debenhams Direct.