It’s easy for small business owners to think that digital transformation is primarily an issue for large enterprises. However, in order to maintain their partner relationships, they also need to adapt to and embrace new digital processes. The supply chain is an area of business undergoing dramatic change through digital technologies. The right small business EDI solution – such as OpenText™ Freeway Cloud – helps organizations participate in increasingly digital supply chains.
Making EDI work in your supply chains
Recently introduced into the US market, Freeway Cloud is a simple, secure and effective way to exchange and manage a wide variety of EDI documents – including electronic purchase orders, invoices and a range of supply chain documents such as advanced shipping notices (ASNs), routing and carrier instructions.
New features improve packing and shipping workflows
The OpenText Freeway platform has been available in the UK for over 20 years and has made significant enhancements over time. Its US debut and EP6 release introduces three key warehousing activities:
- Pick and Pack enables items to be ‘picked’ from master cartons and packed into smaller envelopes or boxes for dispatch. Driven by smaller order sizes involved in e-commerce makes the entire inventory requisition and management process much more complex. Freeway Cloud allows you to go beyond the currently supported standard case packing methodology to support effective fulfillment of increased mixtures of goods in a given shipment.
- Drop shipping is a retail fulfillment method where a store doesn’t keep the products it sells in stock. Instead, when a store sells a product, it purchases the item from the supplier, which then ships it directly to the customer. In order to achieve quick and reliable fulfillment, Freeway Cloud enables the end-to-end process, including financial transactions and inventory reconciliation.
- Cross-docking is the process where products from a supplier or manufacturing plant are distributed directly to a customer or retail chain with marginal to no storage time. Goods arriving at the distribution center pass through the facility and are immediately loaded for onward transportation. Freeway Cloud enables the effective exchange of documents to facilitate this activity.
For every small business, the ability to integrate into digital ecosystems is essential to improving business process efficiencies and maintaining healthy customer relationships.
Learn more:
Discover all the latest innovations in OpenText Business Network here, and read more about OpenText Release 16, OpenText Cloud and OpenText OT2 here.