Chicago—The North American Association of Floor Covering Distributors (NAFCD) is partnering with the Floor Covering Business to Business Association (fcB2B) in an effort to increase the number of flooring distributors sending and receiving electronic purchase orders, invoices and product catalogs from their suppliers as well as their retail customer base. The use of such technology is making the whole supply chain more efficient and will ultimately lower costs for those flooring distributors who take advantage of the tools.
“Distributors large and small can take advantage of the cost benefits B2B technology offers,” said Phil Zolan, executive director of fcB2B. “It saves distributors money as research has found that on average it costs over $12 to process a manual flooring purchase order, but the same order costs less than $4 done with B2B.”
NAFCD will leverage its various communication mediums to inform flooring distributors about the many benefits of adopting B2B within their operations. In addition to a series of articles shared with NAFCD distributor members in its newsletter, Phil Zolan will be a guest at the 2018 NAFCD Convention in November to help educate the entire floor covering distributor community on why it’s in their best interest to join the trend in communicating electronically with customers and suppliers.
“NAFCD is committed to enhancing the productivity and profitability of the flooring distributor,” said Kevin Gammonley, executive vice president of NAFCD. “Facilitating the greater utilization of available technology by distributors is in line with NAFCD’s mission.”
The Floor Covering Business to Business Association (fcB2B) is the primary advocate for the continual development and adoption of a standard language that allows software management systems being widely utilized by the flooring supply chain to communicate seamlessly with one another. fcB2B technology enables software users to automatically send and receive the documents that are exchanged everyday between manufacturers, distributors and flooring retailers in a fraction of the time it takes when completed manually. fcB2B and NAFCD are committed to working together to bring the cost benefits of B2B technologies to the distributor community. As fcB2B members, distributors gain access to an extensive resource where they can find implementation advice, share best practices, and review the current B2B standard with peers and industry experts.