Changes coming for Home Depot Suppliers

Over the past few weeks, our customers who supply Home Depot received information regarding Home Depot’s planned rollout of a new supplier analytics program.

From what we understand, this program will provide a centralized platform for Home Depot suppliers to use for their Home Depot specific retail data needs. It will provide sales data, new metrics, dashboards and trend reporting to help suppliers improve in-store performance among other features.

The platform is also said to have a data connection to integrate with different tools and platforms that suppliers already have and use although the integration details have not been publicized.

As part of these improvements, we have also heard that Home Depot is phasing out certain data artifacts such as EDI 852 documents that some PO based suppliers currently receive.

According to what our customers have been told these changes will begin in late fiscal 2019 and early fiscal 2020. Home Depot’s fiscal 2019 ends January 2020.

This development has raised a lot of questions and concerns regarding how this will integrate with the suppliers existing data and fulfillment systems. We have spoken with many of our customers trying to answer their questions and help with understanding what this means for their business.

Here are some things we know.

• In December of 2018, it was announced that Home Depot had purchased the retail data and sales analytics startup Askuity for undisclosed terms.
• Askuity now operates as a division within Home Depot.
• Current Home Depot suppliers are being asked to sign a contract for using the program. It is not clear that when they sign the contract what the timing of any change to their current EDI data flows would be.
• There have been discussions of fees for use of the program but they are not disclosed publicly.
• The exact date of the rollout for EDI changes has not been disclosed publicly.
• The effect on EDI documents such as 850, 812 and 820 for suppliers who participate in ‘Pay by Scan’ or vendor managed inventory programs has also not been disclosed publicly.
• The method of using the data connector feature and how that will integrate with a supplier’s existing fulfillment systems for sales and inventory data has also not been disclosed.

While many of the details are remain unclear, Advanced Grower Solutions is working to plan the integration of the ‘data connector’ from this new platform as soon as development details are made available to us. Many of our customers who supply Home Depot also supply other retail chains across the country. We understand how critical it is to those customers that they can see an integrated picture of all their retail data and inventory.

Our goal is that our Direct to Store, GrowPoint and GrowPoint Cloud customers who sell to Home Depot will have business and data continuity for all their Home Depot related EDI, inventory, retail sales data, and replenishment needs as well as the other retailers they service.

As more details are made public we will make updates.

If you need a grower software system for your company that is well supported and regularly updated and has helpful features then reach out to our sales team and take a look at DTS Direct To Store/ Merch and GrowPoint. Our team can also answer general questions about what grower technology or grower software may be best for your operation (even if it is not ours) so reach out to us with any grower software questions or request a free democontact us.