Retail item synchronization and EDI-INT solutions help consumer goods company meet customer requirements
Atlanta — May 25, 2004 — Consumer products supplier Morgan Foods has successfully achieved compliance with Wal-Mart's mandates for exchanging information electronically with its retailer trading partners by leveraging Internet electronic data interchange (EDI-INT) software and retail item synchronization services provided by Inovis.
Morgan Foods, located in Austin, Ind., has approximately 500 employees and has been in the consumer food industry for more than 100 years, with a current focus on supplying private-label formulated products. Its customers include the major retail grocery chains throughout the United States, and its product lines include condensed and ready-to-serve soups, beans, gravies, hominy and sauces. The company has sales of more than $100 million annually.
Leveraging Inovis' BizManager family of EDI-INT software and retail item synchronization services, Morgan Foods has met Wal-Mart's specifications for Internet EDI and complied with the retail giant's item synchronization requirements in accordance with the Uniform Code Council (UCC), an electronic commerce standards-setting organization gaining widespread adoption in the retail industry.
As part of its initiatives to streamline communications with its supplier base, Wal-Mart required its trading partners to adopt Applicability Statement 2 (AS2), a specific connectivity standard for Internet EDI, no later than September 30, 2003. The retailer also required suppliers to provide product information to the UCCnet GLOBALRegistry, the UCC's standard foundation for data exchange among trading partners, by January 31, 2004. While many of Wal-Mart's suppliers are still struggling to comply with these guidelines well into 2004, Morgan Foods met both the September 2003 and January deadlines and satisfied the electronic trading requirements of this customer.
"Inovis has put us ahead of the game, accelerating our ability to participate in Wal-Mart's initiatives and arming us with the agility to respond to the data exchange and integration requirements of the rest of our retailer customer base as they adopt AS2 and UCCnet standards," said Roger Heaverin, information systems manager of Morgan Foods. "We are already able to implement Internet EDI and retail item synchronization with new customers in less than 24 hours. And, since Inovis is always current on the latest standards certifications and versions, we never have to worry about outgrowing our business commerce infrastructure even as we continue to scale our trading partner network."
A decade-long customer of Inovis' business commerce automation solutions, Morgan Foods has employed Inovis' TrustedLink EDI transformation software and value-added network (VAN) services since the company first began facilitating electronic commerce with its retail trading partners in 1994.
Now, using Inovis' BizManager for UCCnet Services, Morgan Foods synchronizes product information with Wal-Mart through the UCCnet GLOBALRegistry. Morgan Foods also meets retailer AS2 connectivity mandates with BizManager, Inovis' Internet EDI solution for exchanging purchase orders, invoices and other business documents with trading partners over the Internet. Today, 90 percent of Morgan Foods' transactions with retailers take place electronically and are powered by Inovis' technology.
