Today’s manufacturing industry has some interesting B2B related challenges
Continued merger and acquisition activity across the industry is leading to manufacturing companies needing to consolidate multiple or legacy B2B networks across their business on to one common platform.
As manufacturers build new plants around the world, there is a continued need to provide connectivity to global manufacturing hubs and trading partners around the world.
- ERP systems are at the center of nearly every manufacturing operation and a company can realise significant benefits if they integrate their ERP and B2B systems together.
As manufacturers look to expand into low cost emerging markets they need to onboard suppliers in these regions as quickly and smoothly as possible. Due to limited IT skills in these regions, suppliers must be on-boarded with simple to use and quick to deploy B2B tools
Globalisation of manufacturing supply chains has meant that it has become more important than ever before to improve visibility into the shipment of their goods, in both the distribution of new goods and shipment of service parts across the aftermarket sector.
Finally, recent natural disasters have led to a need to improve the way in which companies respond to supply chain disruptions in order to help increase supply chain resilience
So let me now briefly discuss each of these in turn.
Over the past few years GXS has undertaken a number of research studies to help validate the return on investment for deploying a Managed Services based B2B environment.
One of our latest report from the Supply Chain Management Forum at Stanford University, released earlier this year, highlighted that 96% of respondents said that Managed Services added significant value to their overall B2B integration programs.
- 68% agreed that Managed Services helped improve the efficiency of on-boarding new customers
- 59% agreed that Managed Services helped enable a reduction in B2B integration costs
- 74% agreed that replacing capital expenditure with a monthly fee was valuable to their business
- 59% agreed that Managed Services helped to better meet/respond to change in customer requirements
CNH Global, an industrial equipment manufacturer –
Extensive mergers and acquisition had seen the need to consolidate numerous EDI platforms and back office business systems
Needed to improve end to end visibility and tracking of business transactions and support for multiple languages/document types
GXS Managed Services was deployed to help consolidate multiple EDI platforms on to one, seamless B2B platform that could be used globally
GXS provided full integration to a new Oracle based Transport Management System and SAP based ERP environments
GXS managed the global on-boarding of existing and new suppliers
Provided scalable, flexible resource to support this company’s global B2B activities across multiple countries, supporting many standards
Support for ASNs and e-Invoicing helped to improve visibility of transactions and payment to its suppliers around the world
Indesit a home appliance manufacturer–
This company was already a GXS customer but numerous acquisitions had led to a need to consolidate multiple EDI platforms
Their goal was to try and consolidate all EDI platforms on to a single platform that could be used across their European operations
GXS Trading Grid Messaging Service was deployed to consolidate multiple, ‘nationally’ based, EDI platforms on to one common platform
The platform is used to send orders, invoices and delivery notes to their retailers, online stores and catalogue companies. It is estimated that the new platform exchanges in excess of 100,000 documents a year
Consolidation onto GXS Trading Grid has led to improved performance, efficiency and cost savings for all business transactions
The new B2B environment offers a flexible platform that will allow this company to onboard new trading partners in regions such as Eastern Europe, in a much shorter time than before
Yanmar a Japanese based manufacturer of diesel engines and generators–
Needed to improve customer satisfaction levels amongst their network of 26 overseas dealers and end users
They lacked the ability to track precise delivery of parts which prevented the company from executing customer supply schedules
This company deployed GXS Active Logistics to gain real time insights into global logistics operations from Japan to their dealers
GXS were chosen due to three specific criteria, global reach, extensive access to a network of logistics providers and EDI expertise. GXS was the only vendor to meet all of these criteria
Solution was implemented very quickly due to number of existing pre-configured connections to logistics and shipping providers
As a result, parts are shipped to dealers in a timely manner, leading to improved customer satisfaction in a relatively short period of time