Business Focus/Industry:
Food Markets/ Retail
The Customer:
The customer is a large supermarket chain operating over 1,000 retail food supermarkets across the Southern United States and acting as a distributor for all of its stores.
The Challenge:
Store managers and buyers were burdened by a laborious ordering process, relying on a large number of paper catalogs to place orders and restock inventory from their vendors. This outdated and inefficient process led to several issues:
- Outdated, inefficient ordering process
- Lacked visibility into order details and status
- Lost sales due to lack of inventory, driven by inefficiencies in the ordering process
- Cybersecurity vulnerability due to an open security perimeter allowing communication with numerous vendors
- No enforceable security architecture
- No way to support multiple trading partners
Key Issues:
- Outdated, inefficient ordering process: Managers had to use multiple paper catalogs, leading to errors and delays.
- Lack of visibility into order status: Managers couldn’t easily track current and pending orders.
- Lost sales due to inventory issues: Inefficiencies in the ordering process resulted in stockouts and missed sales opportunities.
- Cybersecurity vulnerabilities: The open security perimeter required for vendor communications exposed the system to potential threats.
- No enforceable security architecture
- Inability to support multiple trading partners securely
This streamlined version removes unnecessary code and enhances readability. You can use this in your documents or presentations.
Aleran’s B2B marketplace solution helped us eliminate paper orders, digitizing and centralizing the replenishment ordering process.
The Solution:
The Customer engaged Aleran to create a marketplace which would enable them, as a single buyer, to gain efficiency, security and control over their ordering process by having multiple brands, manufacturers, and suppliers selling into a multi-vendor, B2B buying portal. Participating marketplace suppliers would benefit by having the opportunity to expose all of their buyers to their products, greatly expanding their reach and reducing their costs. For store buyers, the marketplace would give access to an unlimited number of supplier products in one, location — eliminating the need to place individual orders on different supplier websites or via traditional, paper transactions and generally streamlining the buying process for the retailer.
