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We acquired a company that has a customer that uses their part numbers to place orders.  I want to populate Customer Item Maintenance with this customer's assigned part numbers pointed to the corresponding part number in our company and allow  Sales Transaction Entry to make the switch when the CSR enters the customer number.  The issue is that this particular customer has assigned part numbers that match with numbers in our system and mean something totally different.  Complicating this is the fact that this customer may at some point wish to order items from us using our part number, but that number exists in their Customer Item reference table pointing to something entirely different.  Instead of getting the item they wish (our part number), they will get the number referenced by the Customer Item reference table.  Does anyone have an elegant resolution for this conundrum, short of requiring my customer to supply cross reference information for all of my part numbers to populate the Customer Item table. #GP 2015 and 2015 R2​

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Joseph Hohe
VP Operations
Auto Vehicle Parts Co.
Cold Spring KY
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Hmm, gotta love needy customers right? Off the top of my head I'd maybe think about prefixing the customer item numbers with the customer number, {customer number}-{item number}. They'll probably balk at this, but it would allow them to specify between your item number and their customer item number.

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Matthew Arp
Business Systems Developer
Hunton Group
Houston TX
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Original Message:
Sent: Oct 17, 2019 10:21 AM
From: Joseph Hohe
Subject: Conflict between our Item Number and Customer Item No

We acquired a company that has a customer that uses their part numbers to place orders.  I want to populate Customer Item Maintenance with this customer's assigned part numbers pointed to the corresponding part number in our company and allow  Sales Transaction Entry to make the switch when the CSR enters the customer number.  The issue is that this particular customer has assigned part numbers that match with numbers in our system and mean something totally different.  Complicating this is the fact that this customer may at some point wish to order items from us using our part number, but that number exists in their Customer Item reference table pointing to something entirely different.  Instead of getting the item they wish (our part number), they will get the number referenced by the Customer Item reference table.  Does anyone have an elegant resolution for this conundrum, short of requiring my customer to supply cross reference information for all of my part numbers to populate the Customer Item table. #GP 2015 and 2015 R2​

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Joseph Hohe
VP Operations
Auto Vehicle Parts Co.
Cold Spring KY
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Working in food service, we run into this fairly commonly.  There are a couple of ways to handle things.

1) Use GTIN's for part numbers.  As these are unique and created and maintained by you - the manufacturer - they refer to one and only one product regardless who is utilizing the number.  So even if the customer is using the GTIN to place orders with you, it can't refer to anything in their system.

2) You can use the PSTL tools to do some item manipulation/combination.  I don't really recommend this because the problem is really on your customer's end - not yours.  But sometimes knowing that the tools are available can be helpful.

3) You can introduce some costly cross-referencing logic/processing to handle this customer's requests and transform their order information into what you can readily consume.  This is a pretty standard part of any EDI process but it does incur costs on your end.

What NOT to do:

Continue to process these changes manually.  Someone's going to get confused, especially if someone is filling in for someone on a day off.  Automate this.

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Blair Christensen
Database Administrator
Oppenheimer Companies, Inc.
Boise ID
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Original Message:
Sent: Oct 17, 2019 10:21 AM
From: Joseph Hohe
Subject: Conflict between our Item Number and Customer Item No

We acquired a company that has a customer that uses their part numbers to place orders.  I want to populate Customer Item Maintenance with this customer's assigned part numbers pointed to the corresponding part number in our company and allow  Sales Transaction Entry to make the switch when the CSR enters the customer number.  The issue is that this particular customer has assigned part numbers that match with numbers in our system and mean something totally different.  Complicating this is the fact that this customer may at some point wish to order items from us using our part number, but that number exists in their Customer Item reference table pointing to something entirely different.  Instead of getting the item they wish (our part number), they will get the number referenced by the Customer Item reference table.  Does anyone have an elegant resolution for this conundrum, short of requiring my customer to supply cross reference information for all of my part numbers to populate the Customer Item table. #GP 2015 and 2015 R2​

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Joseph Hohe
VP Operations
Auto Vehicle Parts Co.
Cold Spring KY
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