The Floor Covering Business to Business Association (fcB2B) is planning its annual meeting for September 19 - 21, 2022, at the Embassy Suites Hotel located adjacent to the Nashville International Airport in Nashville, Tennessee.
The annual meeting is where the industry comes together to focus on continuing to optimize the EDI Standards for the flooring industry and work towards increased adoption. It is an opportunity to review changes made to the standards, discuss, and determine how best to solve them. Members and non-members are welcome to attend the meeting.
“This year’s meeting will focus on ensuring that the industry adopts Version 3.0, the latest EDI Standards version with certification," said Lewis Davis, senior director of technology and research, World Floor Covering Association. “FcB2B has worked to ensure that quality and consistent data is exchanged and that retailers can effectively process the data, increasing efficiency, order accuracy and ultimately, adding to the bottom line.”
Davis said it had been 20 years since the industry came together to develop the first fcB2B standard, and several updates have been made since then. Still, adoption has not been consistent throughout the industry, resulting in inconsistencies in implementation.
“Version 3.0 was created a few years ago to streamline the information and include rules to ensure consistency among members offering fcB2B services," Davis said.
The 2022 meeting will address many updates to the suite of services, including: the adoption of web services designed to allow retailers to more easily connect with suppliers and increase ease and efficiency of implementation; fcB2B’s involvement with Carpet America Recovery Effort (CARE) to create a retail software solution to reflect the CARE program’s April pricing changes in the catalog; and updates on fcB2B’s continuing efforts to accelerate adoption rates of B2B across the industry.
“In essence, fcB2B pushes the flooring industry to do what many other business sectors have done years ago: go paperless,” Davis said. “We were formed to set a standard of e-commerce for the flooring industry. Regardless of whether you are a manufacturer, distributor, software company, retailer, or affiliate group, everyone wins when we use the same technology.”
To learn more, visit fcb2b.info.
