Supply Chain Archives - GraceBlood LLC

Navigating the Complex World of the Food & Beverage Supply Chain

The food and beverage industry is a massive global network that keeps billions of people fed and hydrated every day. Behind the scenes, however, lies a complex supply chain that faces many hurdles and myriad challenges. From farm to fork, these challenges can impact the quality, safety, and availability of…

SuiteWorld, NetSuite & Sweet Integration Success

GraceBlood has been stalking the SuiteWorld NetSuite conference this week taking place at the Caesar’s Forum in Las Vegas. Oracle’s NetSuite is a cloud-based ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solution with roughly 28,000 current customers. NetSuite offers such functionality as Accounting, Order Management, Inventory Management and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Good…

EDI & Supply Chain Performance: Don’t Be Reactive

One of your largest customers or suppliers has mandated that to continue doing business with them, you have to be EDI compliant. So, rather than risk losing the business, you search “EDI compliant” in your browser and are immediately presented with a dizzying number of potential suitors. You select one…

Supply Chain Lessons at RVCF

This fall’s RVCF Conference (the first in-person event since the pandemic) was held recently at the JW Marriott Camelback in Scottsdale, Arizona. RVCF and the Marriott both did a great job with enhanced sanitization and social distancing for those in attendance and GraceBlood was there to mingle and learn! The…

The 3 Rs of 2020: Musings of a B2B Survivor

Review Some will say that 2020 was an absolute dumpster fire, but I say that it was a valuable learning experience. What I saw and learned is companies that lead do so by action, thinking outside the box, and leveraging technology to automate, connect, and transform. Successful companies didn’t wait…

SBA Assistance

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash. Originally published by and reprinted with permission by our friends at Loren Data. Loren Data Corp. recognizes that many businesses are affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Federal, State and Local governments are coordinating their responses and more information is available daily. To that end, we…

Blockchain in the Supply Chain: Starting Blocks for Success

Photo appears courtesy of Scott Robinson. You’ve seen the increasing drumbeat of sensational headlines about supply chain blockchain, for example: A senior reporter at Computer World proclaimed in January of this year Blockchain will be the Killer App for Supply Chain Management in 2018. An article published by Forbes in February…

Comparing ROI for Integrated Electronic Trading

Picture appears courtesy of GotCredit.Most retailers and e-tailers, and an increasing number of other businesses, will only purchase from suppliers who will do business via EDI or some other B2B electronic trading platform. Not to worry: this mandate can have tangible benefits for your company too. These benefits are both strategic…

The Back-to-School Supply Chain

Photo appears courtesy of Lyn Lomasi. Ever wonder how all those school supplies make it into the extremely crowded “back to school” area of Walmart? The process involves a tightly connected network of buyers, suppliers, EDI providers, teachers and 29 million households. The “back to school” supply chain probably starts sometime…

Streamline Your EDI Transactions with Electronic Trading Profiles

Updated July 7, 2023 You’ve taken your first steps as a small business owner—you have a website, business cards, a line card, and other collateral for your business. You’ve implemented or will soon implement some degree of EDI capability. Your next step is to put that EDI to use with…

How EDI Helped Santa Deliver Presents this Christmas

This past year, for the first time ever, online sales in the U.S. surpassed in-store purchases. An annual survey byanalytics firm comScore and UPS found that U.S. consumers are buying more things online than in stores. The survey, now in its fifth year, polled more than 5,000 consumers who made at…

Purchase Order Confirmation Rates: Navigating Amazon’s New Chargebacks

Photo appears courtesy of Wendy. Amazon recently announced a new type of chargeback that will initially impact Hardlines’ Vendor Central suppliers. While this might not seem to apply to you or your other trading relationships today, Amazon more and more (like Walmart in the past) is a bellwether when it…

RFID in Football – What Does This Have to do with EDI?

Photo appears courtesy of Jonathan Holmes. RFID (radio frequency ID), a cousin to the EDI 856 ASN document, which is used to track shipment cartons along the supply chain all the way to the distribution center has a new, wider adoption in NFL football. What?! With the Super Bowl and entertaining (and…

What Do Smooth Jazz and Efficient EDI Systems Have in Common?

Photo appears courtesy of Elena Gatti. Here at GraceBlood we’re all about jazz-based business. Really! Smooth jazz that is, where clients’ supply and fulfillment transactions flow seamlessly and melodically over integrated EDI & other B2B systems. Smooth jazz, building a downtempo of humming business activity that leaves the key players…

What is an SDQ Purchase Order?

SDQ (Ship Destination Quantity) purchase orders are also referred to as spreadsheet or explosion orders. These types of EDI orders can create efficiency gains by eliminating redundant data that would need to be sent on multiple non-SDQ orders. This reduction of data is accomplished by sending the header data only…