One of the biggest questions that comes into my head is:
"What are you planning on using the information for?"....
And that is what many of your distributors are going to be asking. Why is it
that you are wanting this information...?
I look at it from a simple "retail" way of thinking.
Why would a large company and supplier of, say, electronics need the
information on whom their customers are selling the product to...?
For example - Apple sells iPods to Wal*Mart or Best Buy or some other retailer.
Apple doesn't require that retailer to provide the data on the fact that I
just went and bought an iPod. LG doesn't tell their retail outlets to tell LG
who bought the flat screen TV or cell phone, either.
The question (from a business perspective) is simple - just why does your
company want the information and how will it be used...? Your distributors are
quite right in wondering why and probably saying "NO" to you in your request -
whether or not they have "confidential agreements" or not. Their fears of your
company possibly going around them (and cutting out the middle man) are well
founded.
In all of my years of retail background and EDI experience, I have yet to find
a product supplier that wanted to know who the end customer of the product is
going to be.
I doubt that there is any 'nice' way you can ask your customer who their
customer is. Without a forced compliance ("Do this or else!"), you will
probably find very little (if any) voluntary compliance with this request.
Again, I still go back to my original question - why do you want this
information and what will the data be used for?
My two-cents....
Craig Dunham
Bear Necessities Computing
EDITalk.com
RetailEDI.com
--- In [email protected], Narayanan Bharadwaj <narayananbharadwaj@...>
wrote:
>
> Hi all, we are proposing a new change in our POS (867) message and asking our
> distributors to report the "end customer" info to whom they are selling the
> goods.
> One of the concerns that our team is facing with South
> America distributors (may be it is the same in ASIA too) is that "what if you
> go and reach out to these end customers and make them your direct partners,
> by bypassing us".
>
> I know this is not a pure EDI question per say, but more of a
> business/process related type of question.
> But because it is linked to EDI 867, I thought of getting some inputs from
> the group.
>
> Can you please share any thoughts around:
> * How do you assure the distributors about your business ethics?
> * How can we encourage the distys to report this info, without any
> worries of foul play??
> * Are there any best practices/compliance enforcements that we can use
> to over come this situation?
>
> Thanks in advance for your comments.
> Have a good weekend!!!
> NB
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