EDI for the health and beauty sector

As the preferred provider of EDI for Health & Beauty, the supply chain automation specialist is proving pivotal to ‘electronic enablement’ of frictionless business.

So what are the challenges and opportunities that Transalis helps brands address and why has it become such a favourite?

With Covid impacting so heavily on in-store shopping, brands have increasingly strengthened their direct-to-consumer trading models, offering more online routes to engage and purchase:

• Recent research by the global management consultancy McKinsey points to a rise in product and technology developments such as DIY and nail colour kits as examples of the industry’s ability to adapt.
• Increasingly prevalent digital channels bring with them an opportunity to streamline operations across trading networks. The goal is to maximise efficiencies and achieve frictionless businesses wherever possible.

Many Health & Beauty brands are now prioritising the opportunity to share inventory and sales data to enable a smoother and more cost-effective supply chain operation. Coupled with this is a growing recognition of the importance of having real-time trading data at your fingertips.

Transalis eDI™ connects businesses to their trading partners to implement, enhance and optimise the benefits of automation and integration.

EDI for health and beauty businesses can absorb data in any format from any source and translate it to integrate with back-office systems.

Transalis has provided fully-scalable, cloud-based EDI solutions to both e-commerce company The Hut Group and transatlantic beauty brand Space NK.

Both have been supported to remove any reliance on legacy EDI systems while improving their engagement with trading partners.

Chris Wakeham, Space NK’s Global IT Director, said:

“It took only one week to onboard the first partner with Transalis as EDI provider. After that, it snowballed quickly, initially with large retailers such as Bloomingdales, Harrods and Selfridges, but soon to customer interactions and other vendors. Now we could see the benefits of trading with more partners over EDI. It enabled far better engagement with our trading network. It became much easier to onboard multiple vendors and customers. There are benefits to all parties in a trading relationship when you implement EDI integration.”

“That’s the biggest difference between them and other providers. I trust the team. If I have a question, I speak to them directly and they always provide the right answer. They don’t play games with you. They provide good customer service and they are always looking forward. They made it as seamless as possible to integrate EDI into our internal systems and I continue to find it easy to work with them. I don’t know any other providers who make it this easy. A lot of businesses believe EDI is complex and they need an expert in house to use it, but with Transalis the need for knowledge about integration stops with them because they output in a user-friendly format. Transalis removed barriers and overheads and got us away from the crusty, old-fashioned view of EDI. Their solution takes out all the headaches of EDI.”