The Answer: Constant Communication with Suppliers

Rowe realized that Sainsbury's needed far better, far more continuous communication with its suppliers. The company had moved from paper catalogs to electronic catalogs to a Web-based information service for suppliers. Now they needed to move to true online collaboration. Rowe says, "We saw the need for continuous information-sharing and joint decision-making."
Sainsbury's evaluated several off-the-shelf collaboration applications and chose one called EQOS Collaborator from Microsoft Certified Solutions Provider EQOS Systems. Co-founder and managing director at EQOS Systems, Mike Quinn, says, "We decided to develop EQOS Collaborator using Microsoft technologies, because this enabled us to deliver a high degree of collaborative functionality very quickly. The wide range of Microsoft tools and available skills in the market was also an important factor. In addition, EQOS's vision of providing a unique collaborative software tool to enable supply chain integration is entirely consistent with the Value Chain Initiative (VCI). Working with Microsoft on VCI is enabling us to reach a wide base of companies who are looking toward innovative software solutions for their supply chain needs."
EQOS Collaborator is a Web forms-based collaborative application development toolkit that Sainsbury's has used to build a Collaborative Planning System (CPS). Sainsbury's first application on CPS tackles the complex area of promotions planning, measurement, and evaluation. The system prompts individuals for information such as promotion type, promotion date, product being promoted, promotion pricing, promotion objectives, and so on. Some of this information is pulled automatically from legacy databases (such as product and forecasting), and some is entered in real time. For example, the Sainsbury's buyer enters the product code, and Collaborator drops in the product name, the usual price, the usual sales forecast for that item, and the quantity of stock in that store and in Sainsbury's warehouses.