Distributors You Are @ Home/ Success Stories/ Distributors/ Regional Grocery Wholesaler Fruit Growers Cooperative | Regional Grocery Wholesaler Regional Grocery Wholesaler Situation A $6 billion regional grocery wholesaler began an EDI initiative to reduce overhead expense due to the large volume of paper invoices coming in from over 100 suppliers of produce, frozen foods, and fresh seafood. Critical Issue In an effort to enforce the new EDI strategy, the grocery wholesaler instituted a $175 charge to the suppliers for each paper (or non-EDI) document that was processed. Reasons Many suppliers were forced to pay this fee because they did not have the capabilities or technical resources to do business via EDI. Capabilities Needed The suppliers needed to be able to receive orders and submit corresponding invoices via EDI without interrupting their current business processes. They needed a comprehensive solution that would prevent the high transaction fees associated with their current method of transmission(Fax, FTP, Web, Excel/Email). InfoAccess.net Provided InfoAccess.net provided EDI services for over 100 suppliers. Not only did our services eliminate the transaction penalties, but we also enabled the suppliers to conform to the defined EDI standard using the transmission method with which they were most comfortable. Purchase orders from the grocery wholesaler were received via EDI at InfoAccess.net and then transmitted to the suppliers in their preferred method: Fax, Email/Excel, FTP, or Internet/Web. The suppliers used their preferred method to also send corresponding invoices to InfoAccess.net. Finally, the invoices were transformed into EDI documents and forwarded to the grocery wholesaler using the defined EDI format. Results With OMS implemented and these 100 suppliers sending and receiving electronic order and invoice information, our client has significantly reduced their overhead expense, cut invoice reconciliation time, and significantly reduced the number of paper invoices. Invoice errors have also been dramatically reduced due to fewer re-keying errors. Suppliers using the InfoAccess.net service are also happier because they are receiving payments faster and spending less time on the phone reconciling their invoices with one of their major customers.