H-E-BUTT GETS PAYBACK THROUGH EDI TEST

LINDA PURPURA

SAN ANTONIO -- H.E. Butt Grocery Co. here saved close to $73,000 in a test communicating product, pricing and promotional information with one manufacturer via electronic data interchange.

The test helped H-E-B save on costs by reducing deductions stemming from invoice pricing and product delivery discrepancies, improving the number of quality purchase orders, and saving hours in manual processes and data re-keying.

The time required for the manufacturer's changes to be executed by the retailer dropped from 10 days to two. Accurate and timely data exchange improved H-E-B's scanning accuracy of products at point-of-sale from 85% to 99.8%.

Quality orders, defined as those that do not require any human intervention for processing, improved 30%. These electronic orders saved H-E-B 1,268 processing hours across operations including buying, administration, receiving and accounting.

The EDI test between H-E-B and Procter & Gamble, Cincinnati, was conducted over the last two years, and results were released in March during the fourth annual ECR Conference, Atlanta.