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The chain plans to crank up transaction volumes without adding staff.
The volume of electronic business documents flowing in and out of Kmart's systems will grow eight fold over the next few years. Rather than hire staff to manage that coming flood of electronic-data-interchange transactions, the retailer has decided to outsource much of that work.
"We'll be going from 1,000 document/vendor combinations a year to 8,000," said Leonard Maida, director of implementation services at Kmart Corp., Troy, Mich. "There were two ways to handle that: The company either had to increase my staff eight times or look outside. We looked outside."
Kmart looked to G.E. Information Services, the Rockville, Md.-based EDI VAN, and is in the process of outsourcing many of its EDI duties to GEIS. Maida outlined the plan-inprogress at the recent GEIS Users' Group conference in Orlando, Fla.
"When we looked at making this move, we had to decide what we owned and what GEIS owned," Maida said. "By that I mean where our responsibilities stop and GEIS's begin in the processing of an EDI document.
"Basically, we own the desktop. We are responsible for a transaction until it goes to the GEIS translator."
"We are acting as an extension of Kmart rather than a traditional EDI VAN service," said Diane Peluso, manager of GEIS' Americas Service Center.
"Our vendors have to understand that when GEIS...