Synchronizing Product Specifications between Agent and Retailer Saves Time, Eliminates Errors
Challenge
An agent who handles overseas trading partners for a major retail chain accessed the retailer’s product specifications published in Gerber Technology’s web-based WebPDM application. Those specifications were then printed out and entered into the agent’s own system. Vendors downloaded the specifications from an FTP site.
It took 30-60 minutes on average to complete just one specification package, which sometimes contained errors entered during re-keying. The retailer published about 20-30 specification packages daily and as many as 300 packages during the busy costing period.
Solution
Hokura developed and installed an application for the WebPDM server that, via a scheduling method, scans the WebPDM database for newly published specifications, retrieves new documents, and transfers those documents to the agent. The agent then processes the electronic files to make them available to vendors, eliminating the need to rekey data.
Success
Instead of taking up to an hour to transfer a single specification package, this solution transfers all of the daily packages in just 15–30 minutes, on average. It is not only faster but also eliminates errors introduced by rekeying. Now both the agent’s and retailer’s systems are automatically in sync.