Background

When we launched Order Locator in the fall of 2001, few suppliers were equipped to extract data from their accounting systems and transmit that data to an Internet-hosted system like ours. We began accepting ASCII text files in the CSV and TAB format because those were at the time the most common formats we could expect suppliers to create and send.

Also, when Order Locator was built 8 years ago it required each data submission to consist of a supplier's total order population which would replace that supplier's previous data when received and imported into the Order Locator online system.

Today, it is more practical ... particularly for suppliers whose order population is a very large number of in-process orders ... to send smaller "chunks" of data that communicate only what's changed. (i.e. the "delta").

What about e-PSA?

Although the industry's not-for-profit standards group has adopted an XML format that is capable of communicating order status updates, it has several limitations that we believe makes it less-than-optimum for effective order-status reporting.

For instance, a defined set of "status codes" prevents a supplier from informing distributors that an order is "awaiting proof approval" or "being assembled" or using any terminology that more accurately describe status than "in production." Moreover, unless a distributor has a DUNS number, direct communication of the status report isn't even possible.

While Order Locator is configured to accept
e-PSA formatted XML data submissions, we have also devised our own XML format to give suppliers who prefer XML the same flexibility to describe their orders as we have always offered until now with the CSV and TAB formats.

Suppliers: do the terms in the
e-PSA status dictionary work for you and your customers?

• What's the difference between "Active", "Pending" and "In Production"?
• What's the meaning of "Accepted"? Is it Active? Is it Pending? Doesn't an accepted order have a more specific status, such as order entry, credit approval, in production, etc?
• If you expect to avoid telephone calls, doesn't it make sense to tell your customer why their order is "on hold"?
• Does "proof requested" mean that the status is active, pending, in production, or on hold? If a proof was requested, doesn't that really mean the order is somewhere, perhaps the Art Deparment?
• If a proof has been approved, does that mean the status of the order is in production, active, or pending? What if the proof was not approved and it's back in the art department for changes?
• Where are all the informative status terms that indicate to a customer the real status of an order? (e.g. printing dept, assembly, molding, inbound mdse, packing, inventory, art department, credit review, custom quote, pre-press, customer service, etc.) ??

Below is a portion of the Official e-PSA
Business Dictionary for Order Status

Order Locator is a service for the promotional products industry by Burnham Business Development, Inc.
© 2001-2010 Burnham Business Development, Inc. All rights reserved. 972.930.0525 admin@order-locator.com