ASI Launches Major New Technology Initiative

TREVOSE, PA – January 13, 2020 – The Advertising Specialty Institute^®(ASI) today announced the launch of a major technology initiative called OpenASI to encourage and embrace standards for sharing data across the promotional products industry.

OpenASI will connect suppliers and distributors through APIs and other tools, allowing data to be shared through commonly used technology standards like PromoStandards, a series of supply chain integration standards aimed at improved efficiencies in the promo industry’s order processes.

Designed initially to simplify the sharing of product data and current supplier inventory levels, making them more accurate and current, OpenASI will also support sharing of transaction-related data as suppliers increasingly make that data available. 

“The promotional products industry is at a critical juncture,” said Timothy M. Andrews, president and chief executive officer of ASI. “As our industry continues to grow and evolve from a products and services perspective, technology like OpenASI will enable companies to reduce time and money spent on mundane tasks like manual entry, emails and phone calls. The chief goal is for OpenASI to help suppliers, distributors, decorators and others in the supply chain become as transparent and efficient as possible, with more time spent on serving customers and prospects and less time on low-value, repetitive tasks.”

More than 3,000 industry suppliers already provide their product data to ASI in a variety of formats, ranging from manual entry to spreadsheets to direct connects with their internal platforms. ASI captures and normalizes this complex, variable and detailed product data and makes it available in ESP^®, the industry’s leading search and presentation platform.

Through OpenASI, each of 3,000 ASI suppliers will have available standardized product data in the most commonly sought-after formats, including PromoStandards, while avoiding significant technology investments of their own. OpenASI effectively closes the gap between distributors who want a standardized electronic format and the suppliers unable to adopt and provide it themselves.

OpenASI will also include current inventory levels for about 100,000 products, with that number growing as suppliers make more available, and will incorporate a variety of other transaction data, including order status updates, shipping information, purchase orders and inventory.

“Today’s buyers expect more Amazon-like ways of doing business, with easy ordering, instant confirmations and continuous updates,” Andrews said. “When fully realized, OpenASI will streamline the order management process from submission and order status through shipping and invoicing.”

For more information, please contact Abby Koss, ASI’s director of marketing for distributor services at akoss@asicentral.com or Michael Conway, ASI’s executive director of API and integrations, at mconway@asicentral.com.

About ASI The Advertising Specialty Institute (ASI^®) serves a network of 25,000 suppliers, distributors and decorators in the $24.7 billion promotional products industry. ASI’s flagship product, the technology platform ESP^®, manages the industry’s entire supply and marketing chain. ASI also produces award-winning digital and print content, live events and educational programs that enable companies in 53 countries to be more efficient, productive and profitable. ASI’s Counselor^® magazine provides the most authoritative business content in the industry, and the ASI Certification Program features 500+ live and online education courses for over 40,000 professionals. The company, family owned and operated since 1962, is proud to have been consistently ranked among the “Best Places to Work” in Philadelphia and Bucks County, PA. For more info: asicentral.com.