Hubbell Does VMI with Datalliance

Dec. 1, 2008
Electrical manufacturer Hubbell Inc., Orange, Conn., recently replaced its first-generation VMI system with the Datalliance VMI service. The result has

Electrical manufacturer Hubbell Inc., Orange, Conn., recently replaced its first-generation VMI system with the Datalliance VMI service. The result has been reduced cost and effort while improving business results, the company says.

Hubbell's first-generation VMI system was a traditional software package. Hubbell dedicated three full-time IT resources to maintain the IT infrastructure required to keep its VMI program running smoothly. John Riley, manager of ePrograms for Hubbell, said, “It worked okay, but only with considerable support from our in-house IT organization. This effort and its associated cost provided no value to our business and was an additional overhead expense for our VMI program.

“We moved to Datalliance to take advantage of the latest technology and the software-as-a-service (SaaS) approach. It gave us all the benefits of our existing VMI program and more — but at a much lower cost. By taking the IT system and infrastructure costs out of the picture, we dramatically reduced the costs of running our VMI program.”

Hubbell found that the VMI logic in Datalliance to smooth inventory and calculate the correct product mix is more sophisticated than its first-generation VMI software. “Each distributor relationship is unique and Datalliance gives us the tools to fine tune the product mix for each individual customer based on a variety of factors and variables that differ from distributor to distributor,” Riley explained. “Datalliance is also much easier to use and more intuitive than our original VMI system.”

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