# Align Supplier Payments with Deliveries

## Current Challenges

- Latent and incomplete visibility to supplier deliveries per incoterms.
- Low quality ETAs to delivery locations.
- Ineffective reporting tools to stay on top of supplier deliveries.
- Lack of visibility to supplier planned and actual Cargo Ready Dates (CRDs)
- Inflexible data integrations prevents key data points like ETAs and delivery confirmations from being pushed to ERPs or Vendor Mgmt. systems.

## Negative Consequences

- Incomplete and low-quality supplier delivery data creates supplier payment issues.
- Unreliable ETAs mask potential delivery delays and accurate cash flow predictions.
- Poor visibility to planned and actual Cargo Ready Dates (CRDs) prevents upstream risk management.
- Sub-par exception management increases risks, e.g., unable to cancel late unshipped seasonal inventory.
- Inflexible integration forces reliance on emails/spreadsheets, impacting decision quality and speed.

## Why Unity?

- Direct carrier connections and a vast partner network covering ocean and rail data.
- Associate shipments and related orders including order details.
- Find orders and shipments by SKU, batch numbers, or lot numbers.
- Frequent ETA updates for shipment deliveries at the purchase order level based on incoterms.
- Mature exception management tools: alerts, notifications, and reports.
- Industry leading platform architecture. We support two-way integrations and shared views with any system or partner regardless of maturity. API, EDI, flat-files, spreadsheets, emails, etc.

## Positive Business Outcomes

- Stay on top of container and purchase order status with high-quality data and ETAs.
- Unlock valuable order insights by collecting supplier data regardless of maturity.
- Manage exceptions using alerts, notifications, and scheduled reports.
- Improve data quality and increase supplier collaboration with flexible data integrations using Unity’s Data Versatility platform.

## Measuring Success (metrics that matter)

- **10%** Increase Days Payable Outstanding
- **25%** Improve Purchasing Process Efficiency
- **3%** Improve Cash Conversion Cycle

High-quality connections to carrier, ports/terminal, rail, and partner data increases data quality (timeliness, accuracy, completeness, granularity).

### Example data points

- Booking, B/L, and container event data
- Predictive ETAs and ETDs for key locations
- Vessel routing and schedules
- Port/Terminal schedules including rail ERDs, marine terminal ERDs, and cut-off dates (North America Only)
- Various Customs Holds and Releases
- Available for Pickup Confirmations Market D&D rates and free times by carrier and port
- Rail station-by-station tracking and terminal ETAs (North America Only)

Flexible integration layer designed to accommodate varying levels of maturity. We support API, EDI, Email, Excel, CSV, etc.

### Example data points (IN)

- Order/Inventory Data
- Committed/Promised Dates
- Cargo Ready Dates
- Supplier-Owned Shipment data (Bookings, BLs, Containers, etc.)

### Example data points (OUT)

- ETAs and ETDs
- Actual Delivery Dates
- Orders/Inventory Delivered

### Plan

- Origin
- POL
- POD
- DEST.

Assess historical supplier delivery and payment performance.

Monitor actual shipment dates vs. supplier requested shipment dates to avoid paying suppliers early based on INCOTERMS.

Automate supplier payment based on confirmed delivery dates + net payment terms.

Evaluate supplier delays subject to delivery penalties.