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Headquartered in Dublin, California, Pandigital develops and markets digital entertainment products, including digital photo frames, photo scanners and printers. The company recognizes the growing digital lifestyle market in the U.S., Europe, South America and Central America, as well as the convergence of media such as MP3, digital photos and digital video and is delivering high quality products to the consumer market that provide the latest in technology combined with contemporary style. Pandigital's products are sold at leading retailers nationwide, including Best Buy, JC Penney, Nordstrom, Sam's Club, Toys "R" Us, and Walgreens.
Since October 2009, Pandigital has used SPS Commerce's Trading Partner Intelligence service to provide weekly sales information and POS analysis from the majority of its retail customers to its sales teams. The SPS service equips Pandigital's sales managers, analysts, and outside sales representatives with near real-time information on inventory levels, leading to proactive discussions with their retail customers to accurately determine when products should be replenished or marked down.
"The sales information provided by Trading Partner Intelligence is invaluable to Pandigital," commented JC Young, Vice President of Operations at Pandigital. "Within just a few months of using the service, its ROI is proof positive that our decision to use SPS Commerce's outsourced service is positively impacting our business. SPS provides a web-based service that is easy to use and very interactive, as well as taking on all aspects of the data management including contacting our retailers to secure the latest information. Pandigital's sales, operations, IT and executives are thrilled with its capabilities, on-demand delivery model, and most importantly, the accurate and timely sales analyses that are impacting our sales and supply chain performance."
Delivering Intelligence without the Data Headaches
Prior to using Trading Partner Intelligence, Pandigital received sales information from many of its retail customers. Unfortunately, each retailer file was in a different format, spanned different time periods, and didn’t map to Pandigital’s SKUs. Today’s web-based solution saves Pandigital hours of data manipulation as well as providing interactive analyses that alert them to inventory conditions that may result in stock outs or overstock situations.
"Point-of-sale information from our retailers has been available, but inconsistent across retailers," commented Colleen Carrion, Sales Support Manager at Pandigital. "We first had to normalize the sales data before we could begin to analyze and provide useful information to our sales teams. With Trading Partner Intelligence, SPS performs all of the data normalization on our behalf and provides key metrics such as number of weeks on hand and the percentage change in sales versus last week. We now can focus our time on actionable information that can impact our relationships with buyers, inventory levels, and ultimately more sales. And, it's interactive, so a sales manager can view specific sales information by item, location or time period for their meetings, in just minutes, instead of hours or days."
Smarter Collaboration with Retail Buyers
Equipped with timely, accurate information, Pandigital’s sales teams are more knowledgeable and trusted by their retail customers. When its representatives call on a buying department, Pandigital can pinpoint stores or locations where inventories are not optimized.
"Today our sales teams are collaborative partners with Pandigital's retail customers, thanks to the timely data and analysis provided by Trading Partner Intelligence," commented Dean Finnigan, CEO at Pandigital. "When we contact a customer today, it's not to secure data, but to have an informed and actionable conversation about inventory levels. During the 2009 Christmas season, SPS' intelligence service helped our sales teams to monitor on-hand inventory levels and secure additional orders when items were running low in order to capitalize on sales during this high-volume selling season. Our retailers are learning to rely on Pandigital more to enhance their overall sales, as we are more informed and able to proactively help them manage their inventory to avoid out of stocks and maximize sales opportunities."
Proactively Replenish Inventories, Improved Monitoring & Reporting
"Most of our retailers rely on us to know when to replenish our products and appropriate quantities to ship," added Young. "We need to know our current inventory levels as well as historical sales to determine what products are selling quickly and need to be replenished. Trading Partner Intelligence alerts us to locations where inventories are in jeopardy of stock outs."
Trading Partner Intelligence helped Pandigital prepare its 2009 year-end sales reports, pulling historical information to compare performance levels. The system will be used to monitor new product launches this spring. By comparing new sales with similar product launches and/or sales in the same locations and timeframe, Pandigital can assess how well each new product is performing and work with their retailer buyers earlier in the process to place additional orders or reallocate inventory.
