Vendor Portal

What do you like best?

Simplain's Vendor Portal was instrumental in empowering DSD users to manage Item Catalogs, Assortments and Vendor Schedules while I worked as a consultant at Dollar General. The Vendor Portal offered and intuitive and simple interface to create item assortment data that then easily integrated into GOLD.

What do you dislike?

A big part of my responsibilities were associated with data analysis and reporting. The Vendor Portal allowed data to be downloaded in the form of a spreadsheet. Depending on the size of the data set, this could take more or less time. Any efforts to shorten the time it takes to download large sets of data would greatly enhance an already robust application.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

I believe that having a strong business case and a very clear set of requirements is the best way to make the most out of Simplain's Vendor Portal. Also, while the learning curve for end users is not very steep, hands-on training must be provided and product references easily available.

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

Simplain's Vendor Portal allowed DSD vendors to directly manage their Item Catalogs, Assortments and order/delivery schedules so that data would integrate to GOLD without user intervention (i.e. data entry) outside of formal approvals from the customer. These approvals, after submission analysis, only took the push of a button.