Lowe's Focus on New Item Introductions
It is a cliche to say that data synchronization changes the business process but Lowe's vendors are certainly finding this true. As Lowe's has gone "live" with vendors, GDSN is now the driver for new product listings. This has been a big change as vendors discover that their GDSN process isn't keeping up with the business process.
Lowe's has over the past several months instituted a campaign to ensure that vendors publish new products within 7 days of Lowe's issuing the Subscription. More recently, Lowe's has started various reporting on "open subscriptions" that they provide to Solution Partners such as Aligntrac. To further focus vendors on this need, Lowe's has created Vendor Scorecards and Solution Partner Scorecards which are available on the Loweslink.com website. Aligntrac has been reviewing all of these reports with our customers that deal with Lowe's. The Aligntrac Scorecard is pretty good but we want it to be even better.
In early August, Aligntrac was invited to visit Lowe's Head Office in Mooresville, NC. We met with the Lowe's PCM team and had the opportunity to present how we are helping vendors meet Lowe's requirements and learn how we could further help Lowe's. We are happy to report that we were well received, as we presented some of the processes and procedures we have been using with our customers to meet the Lowe's performance targets.
The key to meeting Lowe's requirements is pretty simple: i) have the data ready or already loaded before your Sales Rep presents to Lowe's and ii) ensure your Lowe's Sales Team knows that your Data Synchronization Team is part of the process of selling to Lowe's. The Data Synchronization Team needs to co-ordinate their Publication activities with activities that the Sales Team is making within the Lowe's PCM application.