Suppliers can now better honor business commitments made to retailers via Cleo’s new solution that transforms real-time supply chain data into actionable insights, providing alerts before problems occur
Cleo, the pioneer and global leader of the Ecosystem Integration software category and provider of the Cleo Integration Cloud (CIC) platform, released Cleo Retailer Relationship Manager, a powerful solution designed to strengthen supplier-retailer relationships by providing proactive real-time intelligence that enables dynamic course correction, ensures higher order capture rates, and improves relationships with key customers.
“Every company’s success depends on the trust underpinning their ecosystem relationships”
Retailer Relationship Manager is the first in a new group of offerings Cleo is calling “Ecosystem Relationship Management” solutions, which leverage supply chain data to provide suppliers, shippers, carriers, and other B2B supply chain players enhanced visibility into and elevated control over important trading partner commitments, such as on-time inventory updates, accurate invoicing, and timely order acknowledgements. By having a real-time view into their supplier scorecard, suppliers will strengthen relationships and reputations with retail trading partners and avoid financial penalties imposed for late or inaccurate information.
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Designed for retail suppliers to foster deeper trust with their biggest customers and help keep the world’s supply chains running smoothly, Cleo’s Retailer Relationship Manager captures and evaluates real-time situational data, looks for anomalies, surfaces risk signals, and then delivers contextualized information organizations can use to take immediate corrective action – before problems occur. Result? Suppliers can expect to improve margins from reduced penalties and fewer chargebacks; improve on days sales outstanding (DSO) metrics through timely invoicing; and boost revenue through seamless order capture and on-time order delivery.
Furthermore, Cleo’s solution, which is built on top of the CIC platform, delivers powerful insights that help strengthen suppliers’ revenue-critical relationships. Utilizing scorecards based on industry benchmarks and mutually agreed upon key performance indicators (KPIs), Retailer Relationship Manager increases transparency, fosters stronger communication, helps suppliers identify opportunities for process and operational improvements, and protects their company’s reputation — transforming risks into opportunities.
“Every company’s success depends on the trust underpinning their ecosystem relationships,” said Mahesh Rajasekharan, Cleo President and CEO, “When supply chain commitments are upheld, the trust in a given relationship grows stronger. With Cleo’s Retailer Relationship Manager — the first of many Ecosystem Relationship Management solutions from Cleo – suppliers can not only take control over their retailer commitments with proactive warnings but gain a layer of centralized insight and supply chain intelligence to instantly assess the health of key relationships. This is profoundly different from the way many supplier-retailer relationships are managed .”
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Why This, Why Now?
It is estimated that some 80 percent of revenue flowing through retail supply chains is processed through EDI transactions. And even though well-defined Service Level Agreements (SLAs) govern many supplier-retailer relationships, in real life a lot can go wrong. Force majeure weather, warehousing snarls, IT hiccups, and countless other issues or disruptions can impede a supplier’s ability to deliver on a business commitment. But with Cleo’s Retailer Relationship Manager, suppliers can now operate in greater confidence knowing they have powerful intelligence right at their fingertips, all through one convenient dashboard, giving them:
- Complete control over business commitments – from SLAs to KPIs — with centralized, real-time data, actionable early warnings, and anomaly detection, aimed at eliminating monetary fines and penalties.
- Margin protection and revenue growth from proactively managing risks to business-critical commitments plus the ability to detect opportunities to keep order volume growing.
- Comprehensive scorecards to centralize and manage compliance and accountability ecosystem-wide, so previously difficult conversations between business partners can become more factual and productive.
Rajasekharan continued, “Cleo’s Ecosystem Relationship Management solutions complete the third pillar of a modern ecosystem integration strategy, the first two pillars being a robust technology platform – Cleo Integration Cloud – along with Cleo’s vast ecosystem network of trading partners and pre-built integrations into ERP, eCommerce, TMS, and WMS applications. Organizations looking to drive increased supply chain resiliency now have the technology, connectivity, and relationship management solutions they need, all from Cleo. And these solutions are an absolute win-win for any organization transforming technology, digitalizing business processes, and optimizing performance for their end-to-end B2B supply chain.”
Sample Use Case: Proactive Troubleshooting
One longtime Cleo customer, a leading $2 billion food distributor in North America, is leveraging Cleo’s new Retailer Relationship Manager solution. Their retail partners include most every large grocery chain in the United States, and providing top quality service to their highly stringent and business-critical retail customers and grocery chains is essential. One of this distributor’s use cases proactively addresses maintaining predictable order volume to not just protect the revenue those orders represent but optimize internal operational efficiency every day.
In this case, Cleo’s Retailer Relationship Manager is helping the company detect issues outside their own control that could impact their operations. For example, if any revenue channel has a shortfall in orders, it could signify an issue with one of their customers. Thanks to Cleo, the company can detect this potential shortfall before it impacts operations and allow them to proactively engage with their customer to resolve the issue ensuring their warehouse team has time to pick, pack, and ship these vital customer orders.
So not only does the distribution company benefit from the assurance of revenue and optimal operational lead time, but its retail customer benefits too because their supplier is better able to ensure their orders were not delayed – reducing the risk of empty grocery shelves and fostering a better business relationship. This is extremely important – and beneficial – for both parties.