For businesses seeking to improve supply chain efficiencies and reduce costs, more effective communication can provide valuable time and cost savings. If misunderstandings in orders can be prevented … if merchandise packed but not yet authorized for return can be more quickly located … if a packing slip can be matched more easily to its corresponding invoice, then valuable and substantial time and cost savings will be realized.

That’s why NARM and the Entertainment Merchant Association (EMA) have cooperated in establishing standards that promote operational communication efficiencies among manufacturers, distributors and retailers, with forms and procedures that are consistent throughout the industry. These standards are outlined in the NARM/EMA operations manual titled “Improving Data Communications,” which is now available for download as a pdf file.

More specifically, this manual outlines and explains standardized forms, and establishes standardized computer-to-computer formats that are designed to produce further communication economies. The entire process has produced efficiencies in the time it takes for orders to reach manufacturers, and has reduced the cost of inputting those orders to computer systems.

It is not necessary to be a NARM or EMA member to use the business forms and computer formats. Anyone can use these programs and obtain their benefits:

• The ability to locate the same item in the same place on every company’s business forms.
• The ability to locate, in the returns process, each physical piece of merchandise referred to, at every stage of the process.
• The ability to provide item-by-item invoice verification.
• The ability to speed product from manufacturer to the selling floor and into the consumers hands as expeditiously as possible, and improve supply chain efficiencies.
• The ability to effect savings in labor costs.

For more information, contact Vinny Goffin at 856.596.2221 or goffin@narm.com.