Fun Facts for the Shopping Season
We’re going to take a break from our usual focus on vendor inquiry self-service, vendor onboarding, compliance and vendor relations.
Instead, here are a few fun facts for the busiest shopping (and shipping) season of the year. (Have you finished your holiday shopping?)
Can you name the top ten retailers? Here they are, according to the National Retail Federation’s Stores.org:
10. Albertsons (Boise, ID)
9. Lowe’s Companies (Mooresville, NC)
8. Target (Minneapolis, MN)
7. CVS Health Corporation (Woonsocket, RI)
6. Walgreens Boots Alliance (Deerfield, IL)
5. The Home Depot (Atlanta, GA)
4. Costco (Issaquah, WA)
3. Amazon (Seattle, WA)
2. The Kroger Co. (Cincinnati, OH)
1. Wal-Mart (Bentonville, AK)
You probably guessed number one. How many of the others did you get? (Who knew two drug stores place ahead of Target?)
Of course these days, a lot of shopping happens from the coziness of our own couches. Online shopping continues to grow. So who are the leading e-commerce companies? Here are the top five, according to CreatingaWebSiteToday.com, a website devoted to helping you build a successful website:
5. The Home Depot
4. Wal-Mart
3. Apple (Cupertino, CA)
2. EBay (San Jose, CA)
1. Amazon
Guessing number one was easy, but did you guess number 3? Number 5?
Of course, with all that online activity, retailers need to get the stuff to you. How do they do it? Let’s look at the top shippers in the shipping business. According to SupplyChainDigital.com, they are:
5. Schenker AG (Berlin, Germany)
4. USPS (Washington, DC)
3. FedEx Corporation (Memphis, TN)
2. DHL Express (Bonn, Germany)
1. UPS (Sandy Springs, Georgia)
But stay tuned — FedEx no longer ships for Amazon; the online retail giant has started and is expanding its own shipping operations, though it also heavily uses UPS and the USPS.
So there you have it, the top sellers and shippers. How did they reach the top? Not without automation technology — just like leading P2P and AP shops. Okay, so we’re not completely ignoring vendor inquiry, onboarding, compliance or vendor service! To get ahead, you have to automate! Ask us how, and move your operations forward in 2020!
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Financial Operations Networks (FON) is a financial operations company whose products help accounts payable teams prevent payment fraud: VendorInfo, a vendor portal; InvoiceInfo, a supplier portal; DisbursementControls.com, a membership resource for disbursement controls; and VIMCOE, which provides accounts payable certification. FON is a Nacha Preferred Partner.
FON strengthens front-line control points across vendor onboarding, supplier maintenance, and payments — verifying vendor information, validating bank account ownership, running compliance checks, and reducing exposure to business email compromise (BEC) before payments are made.
VendorInfo is a vendor portal for onboarding: it verifies tax IDs, screens OFAC and validates bank account ownership before a vendor is paid. InvoiceInfo is a supplier portal for after the invoice: suppliers look up invoice status, payment dates and remittance advice themselves instead of emailing AP. Both sit on top of the same ERP and are often used together.
Yes. FON offers specialized programs including the AP Payment Fraud Prevention Certification and the Accredited Vendor Information Professional (AVIP) Certification to help finance professionals strengthen expertise and advance their careers.
Request a demo and our team will walk you through how FON can strengthen your controls, reduce fraud exposure, and improve AP efficiency based on your organization’s goals.
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