Donovan Marine completes MDX integration

CHICAGO – Marine accessory distribution company Donovan Marine has successfully completed its purchase order integration to the Marine Data Exchange as of Dec, 1, the National Marine Manufacturers Association reported in a recent release.

MDX is a Web-based, electronic business-to-business portal developed by NMMA and the National Marine Distributors Association. It is used to trade business documents electronically, such as purchase orders, ship notices and invoices. Communication through the MDX is via secure FTP, using pre-formatted text files.

“The implementation of MDX was relatively easy, and we look forward to a streamlined business process with our many vendors,” says Donovan’s Mike Sharrow. “The integration programming to our ERP system was pretty straightforward.”

Donovan Marine’s first MDX trading partner is Sierra Marine, a business unit of Teleflex Inc. Sierra previously implemented MDX to trade with Morgan Recreational Supply, another marine accessory distributor.

“The savings and efficiencies are truly significant for all businesses, big and small,” said June Jackson, IT director at Sierra. “The ability to electronically import a customer purchase order into our sales order system allows us to eliminate the time delay and errors due to manual data entry. Also, being able to programmatically validate inbound purchase order means we know the data is correct when it enters our system.”

With purchase order integration complete, Donovan will continue its MDX use by sending electronic POs to various suppliers and then look to integrate additional MDX business documents, including ship notices, invoices and purchase order acknowledgements.

MDX is available to all marine industry accessory manufacturers, distributors, retailers and boatbuilders, and is uniquely positioned as the electronic business backbone for the marine industry.

For more information about MDX, visit www.nmma.org/mdx, or contact Bernice McArdle (bmcardle@nmma.org), Janice Ilg (jilg@nmma.org) or Norm Katz at (954)942-4141; nkatz@nmma.org.

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