This presentation provides a brief overview of the key business challenges facing the High Tech today and how OpenText helps companies address these challenges via OpenText Trading Grid, the world’s largest cloud integration platform. The presentation also provides a few short case studies on how companies are using OpenText solutions. Updated May 2014
Cloud, Mobile & ‘Big Data’ are all driving new enterprise investment in new IT infrastructures
Recent natural disasters have led to introduction of dual sourcing and near shoring strategies in order to minimise sourcing and production related disruptions. Many Japanese manufacturers have started to spread their production risk by setting up new plants in different parts of the world.
Increased wage rises and strikes in China leading western high tech companies to invest in Brazil and Mexico, some Chinese high tech companies are starting to establish new manufacturing facilities in countries such as Thailand and Taiwan
Tighter alliances with logistics partners, some logistics partners are undertaking final assembly work at their distribution centres
New sourcing strategies being arranged due to the ‘Tablet Effect’ across high tech supply chains, for example the mix of components that go into manufacturing tablet devices is very different to the components found in today’s generation of personal computers.
Increasingly looking for new opportunities in the automotive sector due to flat growth in some sub sectors of the high tech industry. Today’s consumer expects their mobile devices to connect instantly to in car entertainment systems and some car manufacturers are starting to offer in car internet connectivity which will open up a new range of automotive web services. This in turn presents new business opportunities for companies such as NXP and Qualcomm who will produce semi-conductor devices for these particular applications.
As with the automotive sector, GXS has very good coverage in the high tech industry, partly due to the fact that we have been in business and supporting this industry for more than forty years. We provide B2B services to companies across the high tech value chain from contract manufacturers through to enterprise server companies and semi-conductor manufacturers. Once again many of companies will be using GXS for communications related B2B services and there is a great upsell opportunity to Managed Services. The Far East has been the traditional manufacturing hub for this particular industry but there are also key manufacturing hubs in Eastern Europe and South America, particularly in Brazil.
As with automotive, GXS participates in a number of industry associations. The most active that we are currently participating in is EDIFICE in Europe. This group has been around for more than twenty years and helps to define B2B standards for the high tech industry. They have recently merged with their sister organisation in ASPAC called AsiaB2B and as of 2013 they have established a new EDIFICE group in North America. So EDIFICE has become a truly global industry association and GXS will continue to participate in this particular group.
The high tech industry folder on Sharepoint is shown at the bottom of this slide.
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
CAPSA = Chang’an PSA Peugeot Citroen
Manufacturing companies are continuing to look for ways to cut costs in order to become more competitive. Increased adoption of B2B helps to:
- consolidate legacy B2B infrastructures on to one common platform
- provide improved integration to manufacturing systems such as ERP platforms
- Improve internal communications between manufacturing plants and external communication to global trading partners
- Provide improved visibility into highly profitable aftermarket service parts supply chains
- Reduce costs and improve customer satisfaction levels