Tesco suppliers beat invoice blues
Invoice disputes between Tesco and its suppliers could be significantly reduced following the roll-out of a new collaborative promotional planning tool, the UK’s biggest food retailer has claimed.
The WorldSHARE tool, developed by online exchange WWRE, will be rolled out to 1,800 suppliers representing 90% of Tesco’s promotional volumes over the next 18 months, said Tesco business-to-business (B2B) manager Stuart Blackery.
Designed to reduce errors and delays in the planning process and help suppliers manage trade spend more effectively, WorldSHARE manages all proposals for promotional activity centrally via a web-based system, replacing the time-consuming and error-prone process of exchanging emails with buyers, said Blackery.
This typically involves the manual entry of product data, which can lead to the wrong products being loaded up on to Tesco’s planning systems, invoice mismatches and hours of wrangling, he added.
The WWRE system is pre-loaded with product data from Tesco’s own database so that suppliers can simply log on, access their products and propose a deal.
An email alert is immediately sent to the relevant buyer, who has to log on to the system and accept or query the proposal within a strict deadline, allowing both sides to move forward with their plans as quickly as possible, said Blackery.
“This way there is only one version of the truth - not a raft of emails and spreadsheets floating around that could contain errors and as a result get passed back and forth creating delays and disputes later on.”
The secure website also houses up-to-date electronic point of sales (EPoS) data enabling suppliers to plan production more effectively in promotional periods, he said. “We include the previous day’s sales, which are critically important when a promotion starts, and can help suppliers predict future volumes.”
Over time, more data will be added so that the platform becomes the central repository for all information relating to promotions planning and execution: from up-to-date EPoS data to historical records of volume uplifts generated by previous promotional activity.
“We’ve already started feeding some of this data into the WorldSHARE system for smaller suppliers that are not able to access it through other means, such as the Tesco Information Exchange (TIE),” said Blackery.
“As more data is collected, the better both suppliers and Tesco’s own supply chain teams will become at planning promotions and targeting investment.
“It also makes things easier when new people join the business and all the relevant information is in one place for them to look at.”
Ultimately, the tool would be part of a new portal that would encompass all of Tesco’s B2B activities, he said.
His comments came as WWRE announced plans to merge with rival exchange GNX to create a global technology exchange with members including Sainsbury, Tesco, Ahold, Carrefour and Kroger.
