Wal-Mart offers some CPFR capabilities to selected suppliers through extensions to Retail Link. The first is the speed and ease of getting access. The second is the richness of the information that is available. Trading partners only need a PC and Internet access to take advantage of the extranet. Typically they do not need to purchase, install and configure any software, or translate data from some machine-readable format to review it.
Users only get to see the data one partner at a time.
Making sense of data that is represented in terms of a partner's geographies, channels and product categories is difficult. A retailer typically shows its data by department, while a manufacturer needs data by brand. Retailer departmental data may not map well to a manufacturer's brands. Differences in multiple partners' views further complicate the problem. In sum, being a spoke on a trading partner extranet hub is an excellent way to ex-periment, but a difficult way to move supply chain collaboration into production.