These catalog issues are why 1Sync exists. The supplier places the clean correct data there and the retailer pulls and syncs their DB with it.
Some will say it's expensive, but trying to coordinate item info, pack, size, cube, dating, lot numbers, country of origin, description etc. for each retailer is a royal pita. 1Sync makes it easy. (No, I don't work for them or consult for them. I used them extensively in a previous position.) ymmv, Bob ---------[ Received Mail Content ]---------- Subject : [EDI-L] Re: Online product catalogs Date : Wed, 24 Sep 2008 15:49:11 -0000 >From : "Craig Dunham" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To : [email protected] Michael and Timothy, Chances are that your client (the retailer) is looking to clean up their Item Master. As a retailer, I can tell you how ... annoying ... a sloppy Item Master can be... If you buy from, say, Coleman, and you don't have any pre-set standards for naming, you can come up with all sorts of combinations of the letters COLEMAN. I've seen so much, it's not even funny... Possibly the reason that they are requiring the limited content is to, as mentioned, clean up and standardize their item master. But one reason that they also may be requiring this is that their ERP may "lock" the description field after an 832 is downloaded and used. I know that in our case, that's one of the reasons we do not use the 832 Catalog. And the reason for the 20 character size is because that's how big the field they're filling is. Timothy - where are they getting your catalog data from..? Are you sending them the 832 directly or are they getting it from an outside source, hosted catalog (such as Inovis or SPS)...? If you're sending them the 832 directly, maybe you can create some kind of a cross reference table - just for them - so that it doesn't affect your other trading partners that use the 832 catalog. Then you have to consider how 'big' this retailer is... If they're a significant part of your business, then you should do it... but if they're smaller, it may not be as important, as you could mess things up for some larger trading partners. Best idea is to discuss the information with them. Michael - not to ... prove ... your 25+ years in EDI wrong but... I've actually had vendors/suppliers REQUEST that we include the product description in the EDI 850 PO document. Some vendors require the UPC, some require their Item Number, some require color, some require size and some - don't remember who - require/request a description. And, as I'd mentioned above - we don't have a "standard" item description... our description may not match the vendor's description. But it's something that they wanted to I added it to our outbound PO and now all vendors get it. Craig Dunham EDI Coordinator a big western states retailer. --- In [email protected], Timothy Cronin wrote: > We are required by one of our retailers to limit the size of our > product descriptions to 20 characters and to have unique product > descriptions. Currently if we sell a product that comes in a > variety of colors they all have the same description. > I am not able to change all of the descriptions in our material > master, so I am looking at ways to make the descriptions unique > when loading the catalog. One way to do this would be to use the > NRF color code as the last three characters. I don't know if that > is an acceptable solution, and I am concerned that other retailers > may object to our suddenly changing all our descriptions. > I would be interested to hear if anyone else has had to deal with > this situation and if so, how they resolved it. --- In [email protected], "Michael Mattias/LS" wrote: > Descriptions should not matter, as long as you are prepared to "get back" in > your customers' POs whatever you loaded out there (probably in PID segment) > and you are not using that (inbound) description for anything. > > But as long as I have been in the business (25+ years) I have never seen > 'description' used as any kind of 'key' field. A reference field which must > be turned around on outbound documents, yes, but never a key field. > > Michael C. Mattias > Tal Systems Inc. > Racine WI > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ ... Please use the following Message Identifiers as your subject prefix: <SALES>, <JOBS>, <LIST>, <TECH>, <MISC>, <EVENT>, <OFF-TOPIC> Job postings are welcome, but for job postings or requests for work: <JOBS> IS REQUIRED in the subject line as a prefix.Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
