The Inovis Blog

Got back from the VCF show in Orlando last week. As usual, when you are out of the office for a few days, it takes about a week to catch up, so that explains why I am a few days late in getting this post written.

As I talked about in this last post, industry shows like VCF are an excellent way to get ahead of the curve by knowing what new initiatives your customers and suppliers are working on, what the marketplace has to offer to address your current headaches and to gauge yourself against your competition. These shows offer a huge advantage.

There were approx 500 people in attendance which I believe was an increase over the 300 or so that was at the fall show. There was many great sessions including topics about track and trace regulatory requirements and contract terms adherence but, as with the fall show, Chargeback Avoidance with the big theme. JCPenney and Neiman Marcus were two of the retailers in attendance that gave presentations about their chargeback programs and how to leverage their vendor portal capabilities.

One of the tidbits that was news to a lot of suppliers there was that some retailers are working on initiatives to cut chargeback dispute time to 60 days or less. Its no secret that retailers have become more ambitious with chargebacks – situations that used to slide before are not being ignored anymore. Suppliers are really feeling the pain of the reduced margins. Some even allocating staff exclusively to manage the chargebacks manually since they have no system visibility into the problems. Waiting weeks to get hardcopy reports will not work anymore.

The vendor booth area was filled with companies touting ways of managing chargebacks. As I went from booth to booth, I was feeling like I was on one of the speed dating reality shows. I heard the same hastily prepared pitch from nearly everyone but didn’t see much substance that really fixed the whole problem. Chargeback avoidance solutions must present exceptions immediately so you have time to do something about them, they must seamlessly integrate to multiple sources of data without much IT involvement, they must give violation detail and data relationship information to determine root cause, they must provide a means of digital image PROOF that there was a legitimate chargeback situation and they must provide a means of collaborative dialog where the two trading partners can discuss and coordinate resolutions or reversals right away. It feels good to know that we at Inovis have recognized the importance of the chargeback situation and have given our all to address this issue.

Even though the show was literally across the street from Seaworld, I didn’t get much opportunity to go. Before arriving I purchased a general admission ticket online for $89 thinking I could go over in the evenings (I’ve never been before), but unlike other conferences where people skip sessions or evening activities and generally treat the show like a mini vacation, people there were talking about real and interesting business issues late into the evening. I was able to take a late flight and go over after the conference ended to watch the new “Do You Believe” Shamu show. (maybe my boss will let me expense part of my ticket cost, ha).

Next week I’m off to the AHMA Hardlines conference in Memphis to find out what’s top of mind in the world of MDM, data synch and GTIN.