GCommerce Special Order Transactions More Than Doubled In June

The GCommerce Virtual Inventory Cloud (VIC) is now serving a record number of trading partners as the monthly volume exceeded 46,000 transactions. VIC enables distributors and retailers to view the current inventory position of millions of products and transact orders in seconds without the need for complex IT integration.

GCommerce Inc., a provider of cost-effective, cloud-based technology solutions, has announced that the volume of special order inquiries and purchase orders increased by 133 percent in June compared to the same period a year ago. The GCommerce Virtual Inventory Cloud (VIC) is now serving a record number of trading partners as the monthly volume exceeded 46,000 transactions. VIC enables distributors and retailers to view the current inventory position of millions of products and transact orders in seconds without the need for complex IT integration.

“Interest in the VIC has grown as resellers seek to increase their available product assortment and capture sales of hard-to-find factory-only products, all while avoiding the inefficient process of manually transacting factory stock checks and special orders,” said Scott Luckett, vice president for industry strategy at GCommerce. “Further, relentless SKU proliferation drives increased slow-moving items that are only available to distribution from factory inventories. The industry demands a solution that verifies factory availability and completes an electronic order cycle in seconds.”

VIC is among the only real-time inventory and ordering solutions that supports the Internet Parts Ordering (IPO) specification, developed by the Auto Care Association. IPO is a Web service implementation that defines all of the elements of a B2B ordering transaction, including inquiry, purchase order, confirmation and more. VIC connects trading partners that are on disparate technology protocols, such as EDI, IPO, FTP or Web forms. “VIC negotiates the difference between the protocol of the buyer and the seller, effectively eliminating the technical barriers for support of special orders between suppliers and their distribution partners,” added Luckett.

“We’ve made VIC from GCommerce the preferred solution for special order connectivity among the members of the Aftermarket Auto Parts Alliance,” said Dale Hopkins, chief information officer at Alliance headquarters. “GCommerce continues to rapidly innovate their technology in response to the needs of Alliance shareholders and their supplier Channel Partners.”

In the past 60 days VIC has been enhanced with support for multiple versions of IPO, allowing trading partners on differing versions to transact seamlessly. In addition, VIC now supports inventory availability from multiple ship-from locations and promised ship dates defined by vendor-specific shipping calendars.

Federated Auto Parts Distributors announced it is entering into a collaboration with the Association of Independent Oil Distributors (AIOD) – one it said will focus on mutual benefits for the respective members.

“Federated is constantly looking at ways to improve value for all constituents and this agreement provides that,” said Sue Godschalk, president of Federated. “This collaboration provides added volume and opportunities for our suppliers, new partners for our members, and added supply points and products for shop customers. We have enjoyed working closely with several AIOD members in the past and this agreement will expand and create further opportunities for both Federated and AIOD.”