SUPPLIER ON BOARDING FOR B2B INTEGRATION

Many companies start their B2B Integration initiatives in a big way but never finish like Sagrada Familia project.

The main objectives of B2b Integration project will be to get the Purchase Orders, Purchase Order Acknowledgements, Advance Shipment Notifications, Invoicing electronically integrated to Suppliers. This will result the supply chain to be very efficient and manual work of re-keying in data into multiple system is avoided.

But this project needs participation and buy-in from the Supplier community. Larger organizations may easily comply to this electronic integration requirement easily as they do have the needed IT infrastructure and means to electronically integrate to customers. But smaller organizations may not be able to commit the time and resources for the electronic integration. Their business volume may not justify spending on IT consulting and development for electronic integration.

Also companies keep adding new suppliers every month and hence on boarding of suppliers electronically is always a moving target. Companies may not even reach 50% of electronic integration with their suppliers.

How to improve this rate of B2b on boarding and make it easy for suppliers to on board.

1. Make it as easy is as possible for suppliers to on board. Provide them less complex tools like Spreadsheet data format rather than complex EDI format for integration. It is easy to ask the supplier to send an invoice in Microsoft Excel format or CSV format rather than EDI 810 format.

2. Provide them an option to enter the data manually in a web portal and your company can get the data from the portal in electronic format. So that suppliers can spend few extra key strokes to send data to you and become B2B compliant.

3. Provide mobile applications so that smaller vendors can respond directly from their mobile phones. Small suppliers will generally have one decision maker and they can decide if they can deliver on the date requested and click a button on their mobile app to confirm they will deliver. It is much easier for them to respond on a mobile rather than asking them to login to a web portal and accept an order sent by you.

4. Provide easy to use software capabilities to the suppliers. Provide them free tools like file transfer utilities that will send data from their system to your system electronically.

5. Provide free training to suppliers on the B2b integration system you are using and how to use it.

6. Create a open channel between the suppliers and your IT /Service provider so that suppliers can reach to them for any help

7. Keep changes low to avoid rework for the suppliers.

8. Add incentives like priority procurement ranking goes up if suppliers are electronically integrated.

9. Use an easy on boarding tool like TPSynergy.com (www.tpsynergy.com) instead of building your own solution.

with all the above it is possible to reach an B2b on boarding level of 80% and above

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *