Tesco has appointed Inovis to help it get its thousands of grocery and non-food suppliers up to speed with the electronic trading system it wants them to use.

Inovis will manage the entire process of “onboarding” suppliers to the system; the process of getting them up and running on its electronic data interchange (EDI) platform.

Tesco said that it wanted to make the process as smooth as possible for suppliers, and the Actionable Intelligence software Inovis will use helps with this. The software will speed up the time taken to onboard partners by up to ten times, including allowing them to handle part of the onboarding process themselves. It will also minimise operational data errors, help to score suppliers and allow collaboration to fix chronic issues with the data they supply.

Inovis head of strategic alliance development John Kearns explained that Tesco wants to increase the number of documents that are transferred electronically between itself and its suppliers. He said that even suppliers who are transferring some documents this way will need training and support to bring them up to the latest set of trading rules.

Kearn added that it is providing an ongoing service to Tesco and its suppliers, as its EDI platform and trading rules will continue to evolve.