Audience: Retailers and suppliers

Performance monitoring in CommerceHub’s Dsco platform gives you a real-time view of how well your supply chain is working. Getting started with performance monitoring is easy. Look at these rules and tips to get a good idea of how to get performance monitoring working for you.

This article addresses the following topics:

General rules for Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

Rules hierarchy

SLA deadlines are determined by SLA rules. Rules are comprised of “conditions” and an “expectation”. For example, a specific set of SKUs (conditions) may need to ship within a single business day (expectation).

Rules are stacked in a hierarchy from top to bottom. When an order is created, it is evaluated against SLA rule conditions from “top to bottom”. The first rule that has a matching condition is applied and sets the deadline.

Retailers define a “default rule” to be applied to orders that did not satisfy any higher conditions in the hierarchy.

Example:

This retailer has two rules in their hierarchy. If an order is for a particular supplier (”EPS Test Supplier”), the first rule is applied. Orders for all other suppliers will have the default rule applied.

Setting SLA deadlines

SLAs deadlines are set in one of three ways:

  1. Explicit date - the deadline is set based on an explicit date provided by a retailer, such as the “ship by date” on an order.

  2. Continuous hours (also called clock hours) - the deadline is set based on a standard 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There are no “off” days. Rules that use continuous hours do not consider operating calendars or time zones when calculating the violation deadline. Such a rule simply sets a violation deadline at X time in the future after the SLA start condition occurs.

    Continuous Hours Example:

    Rule: Violation after 2 hours.

    Events:

a. Order created Saturday at 7:00 pm ET.

b. This rule uses continuous hours, so no operating calendars are considered.

c. Violation deadline is Saturday at 9:00 pm ET.

  1. Business days - the deadline is set based on an operating calendar, cutoff times, and time zones.

  • An operating calendar defines which days are non-business days (weekends, holidays, etc.). The rule can be based on the retailer’s operating calendar or the supplier’s operating calendar. The retailer determines which calendar is used.

  • A cutoff time defines when “processing” for a day stops. For example, if the cutoff time is 5:00 pm, and an order arrives at 6:00 pm, the clock for the SLA contract won’t be started until the next business day.

  • A time zone is used to define the boundaries of a day (for example, 5:00 pm ET Tuesday).

  • Rules that use business hours have a violation deadline of 11:59 pm on the cutoff day based on the calendar that is applied. So if the cutoff day is March 22, the deadline is reached at 11:59 pm on March 22.

    Business Days Example:

    Rule: Violation after 2 business days, based on supplier’s calendar.

    Supplier calendar: Monday - Friday are BDs, 5:00 pm ET cutoff.

    Events:

a. Order created Friday at 6:00 pm ET

b.Order was created after the cutoff, so Friday is not considered a “processing day”.

c. Saturday and Sunday are non-business days.

d. Monday is counted as the first business day.

e. Violation deadline is 11:59 pm ET Tuesday.

Time zones

For setting violation deadlines, the time zone used for an SLA depends on which calendar is used (see Business days and cutoff times above). For email notifications, it depends on the subscription settings of a given user.

Warnings vs. violations

Generally, the warning should be before the violation, and both should be non-zero values. By setting reasonable timelines, you will ensure the Dsco platform can process events and give suppliers time to respond to potential SLA issues.

If an order is not measured by SLAs, we will not surface any warnings or violations in the platform.

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Rules hierarchy

Deadlines are determined by SLA rules, which are set by retailers with different conditions. For example, one supplier may need to ship within one day, while others may need to ship within two days. The supplier is the condition used to determine the SLA rule that applied.

Rules are stacked in a hierarchy from top to bottom. The first rule that matches the condition is applied to set the deadline. When an order is created, it is evaluated against SLA rule conditions from “top to bottom”.

Retailers define a “default rule” to be applied to orders that did not satisfy any higher conditions in the hierarchy. Example:

This retailer has two rules in their hierarchy. If an order is for a particular supplier (”EPS Test Supplier”), the first rule is applied. Orders for all other suppliers will have the default rule applied.

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Retroactive rules

Rules are not retroactive. Any warnings or violations that existed before a rule was updated will remain, until they are resolved (for example, shipped/ invoiced/ etc.).

Created > Shipped rules

Ship by date; shipped on time vs. late

The “ship by” date is the date a retailer expects a supplier to mark a line item as “shipped” or “cancelled”. Lines shipped on or before the ship by date and time are considered “on-time”. Lines open after the ship by date are considered “in violation” until they are shipped, and recorded as “late” once they are shipped.

Ship by date set by the Created > Shipped rule

If a retailer sends an order without a ship by date, a Created > Shipped rule may set the ship by date.

A Created > Shipped rule may also change the original ship by date sent by a retailer, depending on how the retailer configures their rules.

Example:

Orders sent to “EPS Test Supplier” will have a ship by date that is determined by Dynamic SLA. This ship by date may be different than the original ship by date on the order.

The ship by date sent by the retailer will be applied to all other orders. If the retailer does not send a ship by date on an order, the Dsco platform will set the ship by date.

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Order not evaluated by SLA, no ship by date from retailer

If an order is not evaluated by a Created > Shipped rule, and a retailer did not send ship by date on the order, the ship by date is set to 2 calendar days after the create date.

Ship by date with a time zone

If a retailer sends a ship by date with an embedded time zone (for example, 2022-09-28T16:09:38+05:00) AND the rule hierarchy determines that the ship by date should be used to set the SLA deadline, CommerceHub honors the embedded time zone.

Estimated ship date date updated by supplier

If a supplier updates the estimated ship date for a shipment, it “snoozes” any exception for missing the ship by date until the revised estimated ship date passes. This prevents any exceptions from showing up based on the ship by date. Instead, the estimated ship date will be used. After the revised ship by date passes, shipped on time performance is evaluated against the original ship by date on an order.

Inventory rules

Violation deadlines for inventory SLAs

Retailers specify how often suppliers need to send inventory updates. There are no warnings for the inventory SLA, just violations.

If an inventory SLA violation would fall on a non-business day, the violation deadline is moved back until the deadline lands on a business day.

Example:

Rule: Inventory must be updated every 5 hours

Supplier Calendar: Saturday and Sunday are Non-business days

Events:

  • The supplier updates inventory at 23:00 on Friday
  • The deadline for the next update would be 04:00 on Saturday, but that’s a non-business day.
  • Violation deadline is moved back until the next non-business day (Monday).
  • The violation deadline is set to 04:00 on Monday.

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Resetting the SLA deadline

Suppliers do not need to update all of their SKUs to reset the inventory SLA deadline. The inventory SLA deadline is reset when any inventory update is sent, regardless of how many SKUs are updated. This eliminates unnecessary time to verify all SKUs each time an inventory update is sent.

Inventory and item status

The inventory SLA does not consider the status of an item. For example, if all of a supplier’s items are discontinued, they would still be expected to send an inventory update within the SLA window. Not all items need to be updated to reset the SLA deadline.

Notifications

Exception emails

Suppliers are automatically subscribed to receive email notifications summarizing their open SLA exceptions M-F at a random hour between 8 am and 1 pm. If desired, suppliers can instead schedule when they receive their exception emails (for example, weekdays at 8:00 am).

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Users can also opt to receive inventory exceptions whenever violation deadlines occur (rather than a schedule).

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Calendars

Default time zone

If a supplier does not specify a time zone in their warehouse operating calendar, UTC (GMT) is used.

Supplier warehouse calendars

Retailers may configure an SLA rule to set deadlines based on a supplier’s warehouse calendar. For more information on how supplier warehouse calendars are configured, see Warehouse Management.

Retailer operating calendars

Retailers may configure an SLA rule to set deadlines based on an operating calendar they define. Retailers can set their operating operating calendars by navigating to General Settings > Admin Settings > Business Day Calendar.

Performance reporting metrics

Performance metrics are calculated based on lines, rather than on units or orders.

Adjusted Fill Rate

The adjusted fill rate is the total count of closed lines, minus lines cancelled for supplier-related reasons, as a percentage of total closed lines within the given time frame.

Only items cancelled for specific reasons are used as a detractor for Adjusted Fill Rate:

  • Out of Stock (CXSS)
  • Not Enough Stock (CXSN)
  • Discontinued (CXSD)

Shipped on Time

Shipped on time measures the portion of lines that were shipped on time or early, against all lines shipped during a period.

For what constitutes “on time”, “early”, and “late”, see Ship by date; shipped on time vs. late.

Scorecards

Calculating Scorecard Scores

A Scorecard Score is calculated based on weights assigned to specific metrics.

The default Scorecard is weighted 50% shipped on time performance, 50% adjusted fill rate performance.

Example:

  • Shipped on Time: Weight = 50%, performance = 90%
  • Adjusted Fill Rate: Weight = 25%, performance = 96%
  • Scorecard score = (0.50 * 0.90) + (0.50 * 0.96) = 93%

Enabling Scorecards

Retailers can get access to Scorecards by reaching out to their CommerceHub account manager.

When a retailer is enabled for Scorecards, their suppliers also have access.

Troubleshooting

Excluded suppliers showing in exception list

See Retroactive rules above.

Paused/onboarding suppliers in exception list

In Q3 2022, the SLA system was updated to exclude paused/onboarding suppliers from SLA measurement. If a paused/onboarding supplier had an exception before this update, the exception may not have been cleared.

To clear the exception, a retailer must delete and re-create their SLA rules. Retailers can contact their CommerceHub account manager if they need support resetting their SLA rules.

To see more information about monitoring performance in Dsco, see Monitoring Performance.

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