Four ways to modernize your supply chain

It’s no secret that supply chains are becoming increasingly strategic and complex. Whatever the size of your business, having a well-functioning supply chain is critical…

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Mark Morley

November 4, 20194 minutes read

It’s no secret that supply chains are becoming increasingly strategic and complex. Whatever the size of your business, having a well-functioning supply chain is critical to your organization’s success. But today’s supply chains have evolved, encompassing hundreds or thousands of external suppliers, partners and third-parties.

Faced with these challenges, it’s more important than ever for organizations to ensure their end-to-end supply chain is optimized.

1. Manage real-time communication with an EDI messaging platform

Travis Perkins plc has been supplying the building and construction trades throughout the UK for more than 200 years. The challenge was to reduce and maintain a lower cost for supply chain operations, and to ease staff workload by quickly and easily set up new trading partners. For over 20 years the group has relied on OpenText™ Trading Grid™ to handle the electronic receipt and transmission of messages between them and their trading partners. This includes sending delivery documents, order acknowledgments, invoices and credit notes to customers that use EDI.

“We can rely on OpenText Trading Grid to play its role in ensuring we meet our customers’ SLAs. The same is true for our suppliers. Where we have SLAs with them, OpenText always performs. It’s incredibly reliable. It just works.” – Kunji Bodhani, E-Trading Team Leader, Travis Perkins plc

The transition from paper-based to EDI communication has led to reduced costs and improved efficiencies and has helped Travis Perkins meet customer service level agreements requiring next-day processing of orders.

2. Simplify trading partner onboarding

Dixons Carphone, a multinational electrical and telecommunications retailer and services company, was facing challenges onboarding new suppliers in a timely fashion, prompting a move to electronic trading and increased automation. By implementing OpenText™ Trading Grid™ Messaging Service, Dixons Carphone can now manage real-time communications and transactions using a single platform.

“We have seen an EDI growth of 61% in the past 3 years and OpenText Trading Grid Messaging Service has enabled us to easily scale to meet this growing demand” – Russell Spikes, EDI & Central Data Support Analyst at Dixons Carphone

On-boarding new suppliers now takes days rather than weeks, and the company has experienced improved data accuracy and efficiency, increased visibility of stock levels and shorter response times.

3. Deploy a seamless global B2B network

ArcelorMittal is the world’s leading steel company with operations in more than 60 countries. ArcelorMittal wanted to accelerate the process of adding new customers to their B2B e-commerce network, migrate away from point-to-point connections with individual trading partners, and reduce the support and maintenance cost of older mainframe-based B2B applications developed in house.

ArcelorMittal outsourced the management of its EDI network using OpenText™ B2B Managed Services. This included the management of routing and translation for more than 100,000 EDI messages that were sent between ArcelorMittal’s different trading partners around the world every month.

 “By replacing the point-to-point connections with a single pipe between our IT operations and the OpenText network, and outsourcing the associated technical challenges to OpenText, we were able to boost efficiency, allowing us to connect more customers more quickly.” – David Toulotte, IT Team Head within AM Europe

4. Optimize business processes for rapid growth

Infineon Technologies is the number one semiconductor supplier to the automotive industry. In the semiconductor industry, a business cycle typically lasts three to five years and includes periods of rapid growth, meaning the volume of B2B data can change dramatically. Balancing service levels and related costs while providing B2B stability throughout the business cycle is critical.

B2B e-commerce integration had a material role to play, specifically a B2B infrastructure that was flexible enough to cope with flatter stages of the demand cycle as well as enabling response to the rapid market booms characterized by escalating volumes of B2B data.

 “B2B e-commerce is absolutely critical to effectively manage our logistics and our sales processes. EDI is embedded in all of our key processes.” – Dr. Dimitri Bortnik, Head of B2B, Infineon

Infineon Technologies uses OpenText Trading Grid and OpenText Trading Grid Messaging Service as a stable and secure electronic trading method to exchange messages, with 99% of Infineon’s EDIFACT and ANSI X.12 traffic running across the OpenText Trading Grid network.

Learn more

Visit our website to learn more about OpenText™ Business Network and find out how OpenText can help you digitize your supply chain.

 

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Mark Morley

As Senior Director, Product Marketing for Business Network, Mark leads the product marketing efforts for a suite of cloud integration, IoT and IAM solutions that help companies establish an end to end digital ecosystem to connect people, systems and things. Mark also has an interest in how disruptive technologies will impact future business environments. Mark has nearly 30 years industry experience across the discrete manufacturing sector.

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