New magazine distributor IPS is experiencing a rocky start to business following some missteps around electronic invoice being data provided to newsagents.
Whereas XchangeIT acted as guide, standards enforcer and quality assurance master in dealing with Gotch and Network, they appear to have taken a more hands off approach with IPS.
A conspiracy theorist may wonder if this is because the Gotch and Network controlled XchangeIT does not want to be too helpful to IPS. While I think it is too early to draw this conclusion, I am perplexed at the lack of control exerted by XchangeIT over how the folks at IPS, Rural Press IT people actually, have been working with the XchangeIT data structure.
XchangeIT took over the ownership, management and enforcement of magazine distributor / newsagent data standards years ago. They have not fulfilled that role well in my view in relation to IPS.
I have privileged knowledge of what has been happening with IPS through my ownership of Tower Systems. Tower, like I am sure other software companies, has faced a tsunami of calls from newsagents in how to handle incorrect invoice data from IPS. The people creating the data for IPS, Rural Press IT, have clearly not understood the requirements of the industry standards data specification.
All of the time consuming challenges newsagents and software companies are facing this week around IPS data could have been avoided had XchangeIT applied the same diligence and scrutiny to the introduction of IPS as they have and do to Gotch and Network.
My people at Tower have been working with IPS and XchangeIT since first reported problems with IPS data. We (myself included) participated in a national phone hookup last night which I think will get us all closer to resolving the issues.
I appreciate that XchangeIT will disagree with what I have written. They will say that IPS is accountable for the data it puts into files sent to newsagents. While that is technically true, they are the guardian and we all rely on them to play that role.
I haven’t received any data from IPS as yet. I rang Tower and checked all my settings and all were correct and then I rang xchangeit and they told me they had the “wrong account no” in their system and that it would all be ok once they changed it. I am now up to 3.40pm Thursday and the first supplies were supposedly submitted on 4/7 (Monday) so I am already behind with the stock and the returns etc.
I find it difficult to understand why a compliant agent (one who has all the systems updated and is using xchangeit edi) should have these things happen especially when dealing with a large corporation.
I feel sorry for the distribution agents who are simply unable to send any product to their subagents until the system is working.
Maybe the publishers of the product need to know of these delays.
I don’t know whether it is the fault of IPS or xchangeit but it is a huge disruption to agents in their daily routine.
I don’t know of any newsagents who are receiving the edi download from IPS yet, but I would like to hear whether it is only a state thing or all
over Australia – I am in SA
Don’t know whether it’s related or not, but we have had serious G & G EDI and returns forms problems this week.
We still haven’t had any communication from IPS and as far as we are concerned we don’t yet have an account.
Yet they are still sending us invoices.
Even worse weekly newspapers like Winningh Post and Best Bets are coming through on EDI. And the system does not recognise our home delivery, sub agent orders or putaways for these items.
Have been hours on the phone to the 3 help desks (G & G , XchangeIT and Tower). None of them know what the $#@% to do.
Don’t know how to contact IPS or anything about them.
June,
I had the same problem 2 account numbers, a new one for IPS and one for my Rural Press acounts (rural press connect). They have now rectified the issue informed Exchangit and authorised EDI for my new IPS Acountant, yesterday. Still no exchangit file for IPS.
Peter
June,
I am receiving invoices and returns forms via edi for IPS.Having problems with invoices and returns.Have received 3 returns forms this week for different titles.The returns form shows 0 supply when I actually have supply.Therefore my returns will not show up. I went on IPS website to do returns and it won’t let me enter any figures. Have contacted IPS and are still waiting for a reply. So have not been able to submit returns this week.
I emailed IPS early last week with regard to supplies and returns queries and I am still yet to receive an answer. SOME files have started downloading … with incorrect dates … and some are not downloading at all. Have not received a returns form, so will have to muddle through the website to figure those out. What a mess!!
their own staff don’t even know anything.
some “trial” its turning out to be eh?
I sent an e-mail last week asking for them to open an account for me, i havent heard back…..maybe thats a good thing for the time being.
Rang them yesterday about not receiving data via XchangeIT -they really couldn’t help me at all. Started to get angry but realised the poor girl on the other end must have no idea either. I mean what can you do?
Same here Allan. I don’t imagine they would start new accounts until this is sorted, at least I hope not. Even then they may have been inundated with new account requests and that may take a liitle while to sort through.
You are probalr right Brendan. Could you keep me posted here how you get along?
Sure Allan, same – same.
We thought IPS would do a better job than Fairfax media group, they have continued the legacy of fairfax, we can’t sell the magazines as we can’t find them in the mass of magazines we have, there is no return weeks on them.. making it hard for us and staff to search for them when they are due, as there are no early nor late return with this new system.
allan wickham, I phoned IPS a few days back and were advised that they have a HUGE backlog of applications but to contact them to establish supply. I haven’t done this yet but will shortly.
The files are coming through but they are not working well, prices are wrong, the POS is not picking it up properly it appears and now we have returns files with no return dates for stock they return on the website. Im scared what the bill will look like! I think they should just stop until its sorted then try again.
Who needs an account?? We still got supply we never asked for.
We had to ring them up to stop it. And we emailed them to stop it. Then we had to ring them up again to stop it.
No doubt we’ll have to ring them up and email again and again and again.
I’d assume that they sent us stuff on the basis that we didn’t say yea or nay to their initial email, which we never got.
Why? Because I’m sure they got our old email address from the NDD database, because Fairfax have our current email address.
I still want to know how one goes about closing an account we never opened in the first place.
@Y&g Do you (will you) have to pay for that stock? its unsolicited right?
HB, that’s a very good question. They can’t even tell me what we’d be (hypothetically) up for, because bills won’t be made up until the first week of August. I’ve had to also open an account so I can submit returns, which is questionable at best, because we can’t close it until all suppy has been returned i.e. until the last issue of crap is off sale. No facility for early return online, and any wrong entry is met with the standard line to the effect of ‘rules’ having been gone against.
We shall see what the bill says. I’ve advised them that I will not be sending back any tops until I’ve seen the bill, so they can have the lot back in one hit. Why should I pay the postage for this when we didn’t ask for, or agree to, any of it?
But, short answer? Yes, at this stage.
Bullshit, or what?
@Y&G you can early return them for now if i remember it correctly. you just have to get in touch with their cust service team (i think, correct me if i am wrong) and they will credit it for you, it applies during this “trial” period …
i am so happy i did not sign up and called them repeated to stop supply before the 1st one even came out.
LOL Yes, anything’s possible if you can get the customer service team’s undertakings to actually mean something further up the chain. Unfortunately, the ‘repeated’ part is all too necessary.
That may sound harsh, and I do know these people are probably doing their best, but sadly messages are not getting through past customer service.
It’s a trial alright.