ASN benefits include:
prompt stocking of your books on store shelves, better warehouse
control, faster payment processing, and possible trading partner
incentives. William Lindsay, CFO of Harvard University Press says,
"Unitech's ASN solution enables us to satisfy our trading partners'
needs and to compete on the same basis as the larger publishers."
Michael Leonard, CFO of MIT Press adds, "The ASN helps booksellers
reduce the time and effort to place books into their inventories.
Readers will have access to our books that much faster."
How the Advance Ship Notice Works ~
• The Publisher identifies all the items going into each
carton by ISBN, either by prediction, or by entry as items are packed.
Each carton is assigned a unique carton number (also referred to as the
"license plate" number). This license plate number is bar-coded on the
shipping label and is also included as part of the electronic packing
list for each carton.
• The Advance Ship Notice is transmitted by the Publisher to an EDI trading partner such as Ingram Book Company or Barnes & Noble. When the carton arrives in the store, the "license plate" number on the shipping label is scanned, and the store computer retrieves the electronic packing list associated with that license plate number. The ISBNs on the electronic packing list are then processed by the store computer and posted to on-hand inventory, so the books can be shelved with no delay.