Benefits of VMI … More Than Inventory Management
Last week we received a press release, which was published in multiple outlets, from Datalliance announcing that Legrand’s Wiremold line, Hoffman and ILSCO “are continuing to expand their Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) programs with a growing list of distributors and utilities using the Datalliance VMI platform.”
The press release went on to mention other manufacturers that offer VMI through Datalliance and that over 150 distributors are involved in these programs. The press release, in an of itself, essentially reaffirmed that these three companies were not cancelling their programs … rarely do companies stop this type of program, but, it gave us a moment to stop and ask, “what are the benefits of a VMI program?”
We’ll grant you that there can be many inventory management, inventory quality, manpower / productivity benefits but we asked Datalliance if they had information from their manufacturers to answer:
- What has been the biggest benefits of doing VMI with your distributors been?, and
- How much have you increased sales at accounts that utilize VMI and what % increase is this over your other non-VMI accounts?
Datalliance preferred that we ask the manufacturers themselves, so we emailed them (we knew contacts at each). We haven’t heard from two of them but the third responded:
“It is relatively early days on results so not ready to identify sales growth as a result of VMI. The benefits recognized so far are better on average turns with VMI accounts compared to our other accounts and the ability to seed new products and generate sales for them quicker than the past. We are pleased with Datalliance in this venture.”
Some thoughts:
- “Better than average turns” infers that there is better inventory management or more sales are occuring with these accounts (or it could be a function that the manufacturer is doing VMI with their better distributors who are growing faster and VMI is helping them from a productivity viewpoint.)
- VMI can be a tool to facilitate new product adoption … it can get product into the distribution pipeline faster, which can help distributors differentiate themselves in their local marketplace (if there is sales training and marketing to generate customer awareness.)
While VMI can be an effective inventory management tool, another element appears to be the opportunity for some growth. To optimize the effectiveness of VMI, for a distributor as well as a manufacturer, it could be assumed that purchasing, marketing and sales should be in communication to identify strategies to promote new products that begin to show up in the warehouse.
Your thoughts?
- As a distributor, what do you see as the pros and cons of VMI?
- Manufacturers, if you are on VMI, what benefits are you seeing? Or if you are not on it, why not?
- Reps … how does this affect you? Do you receive appropriate reporting so you know what your distributors are carrying?