What Do I Need to Participate in fcB2B?

Lewis Davis Senior Director of Technology and Research

You have heard about fcB2B, but you want to know more about how to participate. Congratulations on taking the first step to becoming more efficient. Who can participate in fcB2B? Any company in the flooring industry that does business with another company. What do I need to participate in this program? That depends on your type of business. Let us break down the requirements for manufacturers, distributors, and retailers.

Manufacturers and Distributors

To participate, you need to have a computer system that contains your products and prices. Having this information stored in spreadsheets will make participating in fcB2B a little more difficult. You will need a way to translate your data into the fcB2B EDI format. That can either be a commercial translator, custom written translator, or a third-party EDI service provider.

The first 2 options will require people skilled in transforming data into the EDI format. The last option may lead to faster implementation but will require additional costs. Another option is to use the new Non-EDI Product Catalog. This is a fcB2B standard spreadsheet format that can be imported by customers using a flooring specific software package that supports fcB2B imports.

This spreadsheet allows the same attributes as the EDI version but in a much easier format to create and maintain. Providing the product catalog is a huge benefit for your customers. Allowing them to submit PO’s electronically can be a huge benefit for both you and your customers. Just because a PO is submitted electronically does not mean that you have lost control of this process.

The same business rules that apply to your website order processing and your manual order processing can still apply to the fcB2B PO. Companies validate the PO prior to creating a live order and either suspend the order for someone to review, reject the order if it fails a validation, or create the order if correct. A PO Acknowledgement is created to convey the status and potential order number back to the customer.

Providing ordering via your website may be beneficial for you, but your customer has multiple suppliers that they are placing orders for via multiple websites. This can be very inefficient for them to login and navigate through multiple sites just to place a single order. By making life easier for your customers, your sales may increase.

Retailers

To participate, you need to have a computer system that supports the fcB2B process. It can be the traditional automated process or an import process that supports the new fcB2B non-EDI product catalog.

If you are using QuickBooks, you will need to upgrade to a true flooring specific software package. There are some packages that provide a stand-alone package for fcB2B process and allows QuickBooks to continue as your financial application.

QuickBooks is a great application for what it does, but it’s not designed to support the level of detail that is provided by suppliers using the fcB2B standard. It also doesn’t allow you to generate PO’s using the fcB2B standard.

Whether you are generating 5 purchase orders a week or 500, you may find that using fcB2B will simplify your back office and make you more efficient. fcB2B offers many business functions to streamline your entire business, from product and price changes to processing invoices to checking stock and placing reserves. Making your business more efficient can mean big savings for your bottom line.

Check the fcB2B website at https://fcb2b.info/connections/ to see if your suppliers are members. If your supplier is not showing to be a member, please complete this short survey (https://bit.ly/22fcB2Btps), so I can contact them about joining fcB2B to support their customers. You can also help by using the fcB2B Form Letter for Suppliers on the fcB2B website under the Resources > Files tab. This provides a template that you can download and send to your supplier or update to include a personalized note before sending.

Visit our website at www.fcb2b.info and click on the Resources tab to learn more about fcB2B. The Members > Connections tab has a listing of the members who support fcB2B.

Do you B2B? If not, why not? Contact me to find out how to be more efficient in your business.

Contact Lewis Davis at 706-217-1183 ext. 132 or via email at ldavis@wfca.org ■