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 The technologies and processes of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) have been around since the early 1980s, sponsored mainly by large manufacturers and retailers in the consumer goods sector. At that time, the expected benefits centered around improving cycle time and reducing errors associated with manual handling of information, thereby producing a positive impact on costs. Reducing barriers associated with data format differences and various connectivity protocols, companies trusted EDI to become more efficient in dealing with trading partners. Since then EDI has evolved into B2B and it is now the generator of many benefits associated with dealing with external partners in business.
Some of the most significant benefits of implementing a B2B solution include:
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The elimination of manual processes: The most important benefit of B2B is without doubt the removal of manual processes related to the handling of business documents flowing back and forth with trading partners. Eliminating the re-keying of information means fewer errors, less interpretation and less reconciliation on documents. Consequently, organizations benefit from cleaner data, faster cycle times and a better cash flow position. |
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Shorter cycle time: Getting more accurate orders to your suppliers means quicker turnaround time between order and delivery but also a reduced inventory, which requires less cash flow, less warehouse space and provides better logistics management and overall lower costs. In essence, when orders are more organized and less prone to exceptions they bring about a better overall process with your trading partners. |
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Less paper, less toner: Green is in, printing is out. B2B helps reduce forest depletion and eliminates the need for that second printer in the office, the one used for customer invoices. Another step towards a reduction in office supplies and services while protecting the environment, not to mention the associated reductions in postage and inefficiencies due to lost documents. |
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Closer business relationships: It’s common knowledge that B2B exchanges make doing business with a trading partner much easier. B2B helps protect customer relationships in the sense that it’s much easier to order from an integrated partner; it’s also cheaper in terms of supply chain process. |
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Improved corporate image: Large companies have long understood the payback associated with B2B. Most of them use some form of collaborative integration with trading partners. Regardless of the size of your company, there are solutions available for your budget that fit your internal systems environment. Get in line with today’s trends – avoid being a laggard in a field that is increasingly the norm as opposed to a process reserved for the large players. B2B puts you at par with others. |
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More than just a purchase order and invoice thing: From its inception, B2B has often been relegated to handling purchase orders and invoices. Today, more than 400 types of business documents have preset standards. Moreover, any type of frequent exchange of information, whatever the type, can be automated to eliminate manual work. If you can fax or email it, you can send it through B2B. |
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Tap your B2B for more value: B2B is too often perceived as an IT function. It’s more than that – it has an enormous impact on business processes. Transactions flowing on your B2B set-up are rich in hidden value. Choosing the right B2B supplier can help you tap into transactions to extract the value hidden in their content. If you do B2B/EDI, you can easily execute some form of business intelligence to monitor your vendor performance or your customer activity. |
B2B/EDI: Clearly more benefits than just replacing your fax machine. |
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Managed Services Benefits |
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Considering a Managed Service for your B2B exchanges should bring the following benefits:
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Eliminate B2B infrastructure costs associated with hardware, software, power and associated architecture and design. There is no need to create expertise in managing your own network with FTP, AS2, web services and other protocols. If you wish to exchange data with smaller companies who are not yet enabled for EDI, using a SaaS approach gives you preconfigured web tools that allow smaller partners to exchange business documents with your company while keeping the experience seamless for you. Think of the hardware to support those applications, the rack space, the maintenance on the hardware and software and the time required to manage them, back them up, replicate them in your DRP environment and make them available 24/7. |
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Eliminate B2B infrastructure maintenance and management costs. Those costs are linked to hardware maintenance fees, software license support fees, software update fees, to the time spent by your IT resources on updating, patching and managing servers, operating systems, software, etc. |
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Reduce B2B integration setup and management costs associated with handling the on-boarding of new partners, managing the campaign for multiple partners, analyzing new documents and their mapping ,updating maps, making the required changes to documents and to your EDI Guide. |
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Improve visibility on B2B transactions. This is especially true when a company starts using multiple protocols to exchange data, such as VAN, AS2 and FTP. Transactions are scattered over many platforms limiting the possibility of having a global picture on traffic patterns and make KPI management difficult if not impossible. |
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Reduce B2B hidden costs. Most companies manage EDI within their IT group. Not having the proper tools to share information internally with users increase the burden of searches, queries and questions to the EDI IT team, while tools provided in a SaaS model push the information to the users, limiting the involvement of IT resources. Also, the hidden cost of managing EDI internally comes from the opportunity cost of not having other projects completed by these internal resources for core functions. |
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Get to B2B benefits faster and easier by utilizing expert help in managing connection campaigns with trading partners. Results come in quicker with a lot less headaches and less draw on internal staff. |
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Be ready to support new protocols and data formats by leveraging companies providing it as a service. The best managed services providers stay ahead of the curve in providing the latest and greatest, so you benefit from technological advancements as part of your service. Moreover, you don’t need to create that expertise internally. |
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• Reduce B2B impact on internal IT resources by outsourcing non core functions such as B2B/EDI. Your IT team will focus their time and efforts on business related issues where their knowledge of your internal operations and processes is key. |
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Data Synchronization Benefits |
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eBusiness product data synchronization benefits Efficient product data synchronization services such as ecCatalogue provide retailers with the accurate and up-to-date product data they need to optimize their supply chain operations. Retailers have invested heavily in IT in recent years, adding or upgrading merchandising systems, POS, ERP, WMS and data warehouses. Each of these systems needs accurate and up-to-date product information to deliver the benefits for which it has been implemented.
Eliminate manual data entry Manual data entry processes increase administrative costs. Even higher costs are incurred to correct the errors that result from these manual processes. Automated product data synchronization allows suppliers to electronically transmit key product information to retailers or distributors including product codes, GTIN numbers, descriptions, color and size information, packaging dimensions and retail suggested prices.
Reduce out of stock situations Out of stock situations lead to lost sales 49% of the time. Furthermore, out of stock also impacts customer loyalty as the customer who made it to the store and is ready to buy may decide to try to find its favorite product from another retailer. Out of stock may result from many sources, but a key element is product data integrity, since it is virtually impossible to deliver accurately on orders containing wrong product codes or other errors. Supply chain studies have demonstrated that automated product data synchronization can eliminate or greatly reduce data integrity related out of stocks.
Improve new product introduction At new product introduction, the incidence of errors in the manual data entry process is even more likely. Since the bulk of the product launch investment and sale efforts occur at that time, wrong product data can create significant revenue losses for corporations.
The value of product data synchronization increases when product data changes frequently. Take the case of the fashion industry where most product lines are renewed seasonally: if it fully supports style, color and size information, product data synchronization can help apparel and footwear retailers to get significant improvements in supply chain efficiencies.
Improve warehouse and logistics operations New WMS applications have sophisticated planning functions and advanced features for improving the receiving process and for enabling new operating modes such as cross-docking. Their performance, though, depends on the availability of detailed dimensions and packaging data for each product.
Entering this data at the retailer warehouse is an extremely labor intensive operation where people need to measure and enter product information. With product data synchronization this information is populated directly from the catalogue and becomes available as soon as the new product is created. |
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