OpenText™ Cloud Editions (CE) 21.3 includes the availability of OpenText™ Core Share for SAP® Solutions — an exciting, new offering that further expands the portfolio of OpenText cloud solutions for SAP customers. Core Share for SAP is a cloud-based solution available as a validated app by SAP, providing customers with the capabilities to securely share, collaborate on, and synchronize documents outside the firewall, all without users having to leave the SAP application where they’re most comfortable working.
The app integrates with OpenText™ Extended ECM suite of solutions for SAP, enabling organizations to further leverage their investments in OpenText content services and SAP solutions running either in the cloud or on-premise.
Importantly, the integration of Core Share for SAP allows documents and files to be securely shared directly from the primary SAP content repository with external partners, customers and vendors while maintaining visibility and control throughout the collaboration process. And, as a SaaS application, organizations can expedite deployment faster to realize gains in employee productivity and organizational efficiencies.
Virtually any user engaged in an SAP business process can leverage the content sharing capabilities of Core Share for SAP from any device, location and time zone.
A few examples:
Field workers can access important engineering documents from their mobile phone when on-site and offline
HR administrators can exchange sensitive employee files with external insurance companies to validate benefit claims
Mortgage lenders and insurance companies can review and approve confidential corporate and personal applications
Procurement specialists can collaborate with global distributors and vendors/suppliers to ensure timely product availability across the supply chain.
Manufacturing operations can obtain time sensitive documents on procedures to ensure compliance.
You’ll note that the range of scenarios are independent of the type of business or industry. Secondly, users — whether employees, partners, vendors and/or customers — are actively engaged in the process to share, access and/or collaborate on content. Core Share for SAP is enabled on the platform, application and systems that SAP users are already familiar with. As a result, users are quick to adopt the solution and can immediately realize the business benefits from enabling this level of collaboration.
No matter where you start, either OpenText Extended ECM supporting SAP S/4HANA or SAP SuccessFactors, Core Share for SAP delivers seamless collaboration on content where it’s needed, while providing the security, scalability and performance organizations have come to expect from the OpenText and SAP partnership.
OpenText Core Share for SAP makes it easy for IT and administrators to apply and manage content access and control under a common framework and removes the risk associated with using a third-party application outside of the organization to share confidential files and documents.
Explore the many benefits Core Share for SAP can offer your business!
OpenText was recognized as a Leader in the new Forrester Wave™: Content Platforms, Q2 2021 report, with the analysts at Forrester noting, “OpenText’s product strategy has a strong focus on integration with essential employee productivity and enterprise applications.” We received the highest possible score for the criteria of “Integrations and Interoperability”.
OpenText Core Share for SAP is now available at the SAP Store.
Welcome to the July 2021 edition of OpenText’s E-Invoicing Regulation update.
OpenText wants its clients to be informed with the latest information related to the evolution of e-invoicing and VAT compliance around the world.
In alignment with this goal, we are pleased to share the latest changes in the industry.
The following changes are anticipated:
Compliance news updates
Europe
France: Reform 2023 – Focus on the latest working hypotheses of the DGFiP with regard to the obligation of e-Reporting
Spurred on by the emergence at an international level of continuous transaction control models (CTCs) the French government intends to generalize, from 2023, the use of electronic invoicing, as well as the transmission of additional data (‘e-Reporting’).
To this end, Article 195 of the Finance Law for 2021 provides that the Government is authorized to take by ordinance, any necessary measures by the end of September 2021 at the latest, aimed at the implementation of these obligations. At the same time, the AIFE should publish guidance notes specifying the functional and technical specifications related to these obligations, in particular with regard to the required semantic and syntactic formats.
In addition, a ratification bill is expected to be submitted to Parliament by the end of December 2021.
Italy: Postponement of the E-Document Legislation
By means of Decision no. 371/2021, the Agency for Digital Italy (AgID) has extended the entry into force of the Guidelines on the formation, management, and retention of IT documents to 1 January 2022. Consequently, companies will have more time to adapt their e-archiving systems to the new Guidelines, which should have come into force on 7 June 2021.
In this regard, it should be noted that, with reference to private taxpayers (e.g. companies), the Guidelines, compared to the previous legislation, define:
the extension of metadata to be associated with the IT document;
new formats for retention;
special rules and procedures for mass digitalization of paper documents;
new roles in the preservation process;
the possibility of appointing a retention manager from outside the company;
new requirements in relation to interoperability standards for preservation systems.
Poland: Draft bill introducing structured electronic invoices
The draft bill makes it possible for taxpayers to issue structured electronic invoices as one of the forms of documenting transactions (i.e. on top of the currently acceptable invoices issued in paper or electronic ways). The structured electronic invoices will be issued and received via the electronic platform KSeF.
The draft bill assumes that taxpayers will be issuing electronic invoices according to the officially published schema. The government underlines that an invoice can be drafted in a taxpayer’s financial system and then sent to KSeF. Having received the invoice, KSeF will assign a unique number and a date to such an invoice. The invoice will be deemed as issued/received on the day when this unique number is assigned.
The draft bill assumes that the regulations will enter into force on 1 October 2021. In the initial phase, the use of structured electronic invoices will be voluntary, however, it is expected that it will eventually become mandatory in 2023.
Portugal: Further extension of deadline for use of PDF invoices
Order 133/2021-XXII of the State Secretary of Tax Affairs of 22 April 2021, adjusts the 2021 calendar of tax obligations free of any charges or penalties for taxpayers. The Order also extends until 30 September 2021 the term for the acceptance of invoices in PDF format as electronic invoices for all tax purposes.
Serbia: Draft law on e-invoicing for B2B and B2G transactions
The draft version of the Law on Electronic invoicing was published on the website of the Ministry of Finance. The draft law currently hasn’t been passed by the National Assembly of Serbia yet. The law is supposed to mandate among others:
the issuance of electronic invoices for B2B and B2G transactions;
the system of e-invoices;
the elements which e-invoices should contain; and
e-archiving
The provisions of the law are supposed to apply starting from 1 January 2022 for B2G transactions, while for B2B transactions reception and storage of e-invoices will be mandatory starting from 1 July 2022 and the issuance of e-invoices starting from 1 January 2023.
Slovakia: Public consultation e-Invoicing B2B
The E-invoicing initiative is currently in the process of consultations by the authorities of the Slovak Financial Directorate. Based on the authorities’ preliminary statements about e-invoicing, they are planning to introduce real-time reporting which should be mandatory for all transactions over time.
The aim of this initiative is to reduce administrative burdens on the side of tax subjects (e.g. to reduce obligatory VAT reporting) and to obtain real-time invoicing data on the side of tax authorities and use it for tax control purposes.
Mandatory e-invoicing should be introduced gradually, in the first phase for G2G, B2G transactions, and later on for B2B and B2C transactions; however, dates are yet to be released.
The Americas
Colombia: Digital Signature and New Technical Rules
The National Tax and Customs Directorate (DIAN) has made modifications to the law that created the electronic invoicing system in Colombia with Resolution 000012. One of the new measures that has been adopted is the mandatory inclusion of electronic signatures in invoices.
Despite being only recently made mandatory, this mechanism has been in place since the creation of the electronic invoicing system in Colombia.
Panama: Implementation of e-invoicing clearance model
Recently (June 1st 2021), the Tax Authorities have opened a voluntary process for e-invoicing in Panama. This is the first step towards a general mandate. Up to date no official specific date for this general mandate has been published, however, the Tax Authorities are making reference to FY22 as the implementation date.
US: Market Pilot Working Group building & testing a virtual network for the exchange of e-invoices
The Business Payments Coalition with support from the Federal Reserve will begin recruiting for a Market Pilot Work Group to build and test a virtual network that will enable businesses of all kinds to exchange e-invoices.
Interested stakeholders will be needed to develop and test the open-source tools and access points to be used in the pilot.
The Government will provide $15.3 million in funding to increase awareness of the value of e-invoicing for all businesses. This follows the announcement that e-invoicing will be mandatory for all Commonwealth agencies from 1 July 2022.
This funding will support the Treasury and the Australian Peppol E-Invoicing Authority to improve business e-invoicing awareness and adoption. The aim is to assist in the adoption of Peppol e-Invoicing in the private and public sectors and lay further foundations for an expected national e-invoicing mandate.
Disclaimer: This newsletter is intended to reflect the direction the industry is moving and does not a reflection a commitment for the OpenText Active Invoices with Compliance (AIC) product development roadmap to meet any particular stated regulations.
LEGAL Disclaimer: The information contained in this newsletter is for general guidance on matters of interest only. The authors are not herein rendering legal, accounting, tax or other professional advice and the content should not be used as a substitute for consultation with professional accounting, tax, legal or other competent advisers. While we make every attempt to ensure the accuracy of the information contained within is from reliable sources, OpenText is not responsible for any errors or omissions, or for any results obtained from the use of this information. All information is provided “as is” with no guarantee of completeness, accuracy, timeliness, or of the results obtained from the use of this information, and without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including, but not limited to warranties of performance and fitness for purpose. In no event will OpenText or its agents or employees be liable to you or anyone else for any decision made or action taken in reliance on the information in this Site or for any consequential, special or similar damages.
Vertica database servers expect to receive all data in UTF-8 and Vertica outputs all data in UTF-8. However, you can load or insert data into Vertica that is non UTF-8, but you’ll want to clean it up.
I used to recommend the REGEXP_REPLACE function for that task, but now there is a better way!
Vertica 10.1.x introduces the MAKEUTF8 built-in function that coerces a string to UTF-8 by removing or replacing non-UTF-8 characters.
The old way of removing non-UTF-8 characters:
dbadmin=> \d nonutf_test;
List of Fields by Tables
Schema | Table | Column | Type | Size | Default | Not Null | Primary Key | Foreign Key
--------+-------------+--------+--------------+------+---------+----------+-------------+-------------
public | nonutf_test | c | varchar(100) | 100 | | f | f |
(1 row)
dbadmin=> INSERT INTO nonutf_test SELECT E'\xa0' || 'Test!' || E'\xa0';
OUTPUT
--------
1
(1 row)
dbadmin=> SELECT c, REGEXP_REPLACE(c, '[^\t\r\n\x20-\x7E]+', '', 1, 0, 'b') FROM nonutf_test ;
c | REGEXP_REPLACE
---------+----------------
▒Test!▒ | Test!
(1 row)
dbadmin=> SELECT * FROM nonutf_test;
c
---------
▒Test!▒
(1 row)
dbadmin=> UPDATE /*+ DIRECT */ nonutf_test SET c = REGEXP_REPLACE(c, '[^\t\r\n\x20-\x7E]+', '', 1, 0, 'b');
OUTPUT
--------
1
(1 row)
dbadmin=> SELECT * FROM nonutf_test;
c
-------
Test!
(1 row)
Now the new and improved way:
verticademos=> TRUNCATE TABLE nonutf_test;
TRUNCATE TABLE
verticademos=> INSERT INTO nonutf_test SELECT E'\xa0' || 'Test!' || E'\xa0';
OUTPUT
--------
1
(1 row)
verticademos=> SELECT c, makeutf8(c) FROM nonutf_test;
c | makeutf8
---------+----------
▒Test!▒ | Test!
(1 row)
verticademos=> SELECT c, makeutf8(c) "Removed non-UTF8 Junk!" FROM nonutf_test;
c | Removed non-UTF8 Junk!
---------+------------------------
▒Test!▒ | Test!
(1 row)
verticademos=> UPDATE nonutf_test SET c = makeutf8(c);
OUTPUT
--------
1
(1 row)
verticademos=> SELECT * FROM nonutf_test;
c
-------
Test!
(1 row)
Earlier this year, OpenText and IDG surveyed enterprises with more than 1,000 employees on ERP integration, including insights on their current system landscape, integration requirements, key challenges, and future plans. The responses covered companies in the United States and Europe, ranging across 19 different industries, but despite this diversity a vast majority of them pointed to a couple of key conclusions: The world of ERP systems is rapidly evolving and existing integration solutions are not keeping up with this change.
Many organizations have a complex ERP landscape
As the adoption of cloud applications continues in organizations, ERP systems are very much impacted by this transition. 63 percent of survey respondents reported having ERP deployments in the public cloud, while 45 percent had private cloud deployments. However, 78 percent of organizations were still using on-premises ERP systems as well.
The high percentages in each category indicate that many organizations currently have a fragmented ERP landscape that spans across different deployment models. The top three ERP vendors used by our respondents included Oracle (53 percent), Microsoft (49 percent), and SAP (39 percent), while cloud native ERP systems including Oracle NetSuite (23 percent) and Workday (20 percent) were also well represented.
ERP integration is increasingly important
The fragmentation of the ERP landscape alone adds complexity to ERP integration, but this is further compounded by the extensive needs around connecting ERPs with various other systems. Systems that are most often integrated with the ERP include CRM (68 percent), HRM (66 percent) and trading partner systems (66 percent), but several other categories of applications were also integrated by more than 50 percent of organizations.
Another interesting point related to integrating the ERP with other systems was that, on average, 44 percent of the transactional data processed in the organization’s ERP system comes from external systems, meaning those managed by suppliers, customers, logistics providers, and so on. The high percentage not only emphasizes how important integrations are, but also highlights the need for managing data quality as part of integration operations. With little to no control over how data is generated by external partners, addressing data quality using content validations, business rules, and other logic embedded in the integration flows can play a critical role in avoiding process errors that lead to business disruption and high cost of operations.
The importance of integration is understood, yet it continues to be a major challenge for organizations
Based on our survey, organizations seem to understand the importance of integration. 79 percent stated that integration is a critical priority for them, and 92 percent said they use a centralized integration platform for delivering some or most of their integrations.
Yet, integration remains a challenge in terms of both project delivery and ongoing operations. 86 percent of the respondents said they have experienced delays in rolling out ERP integration projects, and 63 percent had experienced loss of connectivity due to integration issues.
The biggest challenges relate to having access to the right skills
When inquired about the cause of delays with ERP integration projects, lack of integration expertise was the number one challenge (48 percent), closely followed by competing priority of other projects (47 percent). Open answers concerning the biggest challenges with ERP integration further revealed the diversity of skills required, not just related to different aspects of integration but also to the specific ERP system the organization is using. The responses highlighted several key areas around skills management from hiring and retaining people with the right skills to keeping up with the latest changes in technology.
ERP integration requirements are evolving fast
According to our study, organizations are actively looking to modernize their ERP systems, while many have already taken steps in this direction. When asked about their plans, 56 percent of the respondents stated they plan to move an on-premises ERP solution to the cloud, while 20 percent are planning to update their cloud ERP solution. In addition, 31 percent of organizations had already recently updated a cloud ERP.
However, 54 percent stated that they are planning to update an on-premises ERP solution, creating significant overlap between organizations using cloud versus on-premises ERPs. Only 16 percent of organizations stated that they are looking to consolidate multiple ERP instances onto a single instance, meaning that the fragmentation of the ERP landscape in organizations is likely to persist for some time still.
What about addressing those integration challenges then? 91 percent of organizations said they are looking to develop new integration capabilities.
OpenText’s approach addresses the key pain points in a unified way
OpenText helps organizations extend their integration capabilities by leveraging a fully managed service consisting of a unified integration platform and the people and processes needed for efficient project delivery and program management. This approach ensures availability of the right skills and modern, fit-for-purpose technology to meet various kinds of integrations needs, addressing the key challenges identified by the respondents in our study. More information about OpenText’s managed service approach can be found on our website.
Interested in learning more about the study? Read the full whitepaper:
OpenText™ Archive Center has been the cornerstone of on-premises enterprise information management (EIM) deployments for SAP solutions since the late 1990s. While these systems offer great business value, they can be complex and costly to run and maintain, requiring specialized knowledge and upgrades every three years. Moving to the cloud and a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model can reduce costs (including operational costs, service fees and maintenance) and shift the burden away from internal IT resources. It also delivers benefits like system security, regular software updates and operational agility.
Yes, it can be daunting to think about moving massive amounts of data to the cloud. And it’s essential to have a team of experienced and qualified experts following best practices to ensure a successful migration. This provides:
Faster implementation time
Reduced administration resource consumption
Lower risk
Validated migration approach
Maximum adoption
OpenText™ Core Archive for SAP Solutions offers the solution. It’s OpenText’s public cloud archiving solution for SAP data (structured) and documents (unstructured) based on SAP ArchiveLink and SAP Information Lifecycle Management (ILM).
OpenText™ Professional Services offers two FasTrak Implementation Packaged Services to accelerate the journey to the OpenText Cloud with Core Archive for new and existing customers of OpenText Archiving and Document Access for SAP. These services enable archiving to start in less than 20 days while providing cost savings:
Core Archive Onboarding FasTrak—This includes an OpenText Cloud Readiness workshop, a technical architecture specification, installation of Core Archive Connector the configuration of the SAP ArchiveLink and SAP ILM connections, re-configuration of clients like OpenText Viewers and Enterprise Scan, and support to run tests
Core Archive Migration FasTrak—This includes a migration readiness workshop, preparation of the migration with the configuration of the cloud filter on the existing on-premises Archive Center system, the export, shipment and import of customer data, and the cutover and final completeness check of migration.
Concurrent operation of on-premises Archive Center with cloud-based Core Archive during migration phase
Your organization can benefit from the extensive expertise and experience that the OpenText Professional Services team provides for extending SAP solutions. The team can also provide a full migration service for third-party archive systems using migration approach and technology that has been proven in many migration projects over the last two decades. Please contact us to learn more.
Authors: Paul Pineda and Roland Meier, Professional Services
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world in March 2020, in-store shopping was not an option. For many consumers this meant a switch to online buying – even for large, expensive items that pre-COVID they would have purchased in a brick-and-mortar store, like furniture, laptops or TVs. This shift created a gap in the face-to-face sales process, eliminating a key opportunity to personalize the customer experience. With these changes to customer interactions expected to be permanent, rethinking how your customers want to engage with you is vital.
The stakes are high: A recent consumer survey commissioned by OpenText™ shows that for 59% of respondents, a personalized digital experience was vital to becoming a repeat customer. In a year in which face-to-face interactions have not been possible, being able to deliver an exceptional digital customer experience is now critical to winning customer loyalty.
Survey says: A personalized digital experience is vital to driving retention
Our results show the extent to which the pandemic has changed customers’ expectations of brands, and the increasingly important role of a streamlined digital experience post-COVID. In our survey, 62% of respondents said the way they digitally interact with brands has changed during the pandemic. This represents a substantial transformation to customer interactions that requires brands to adapt to evolving customer needs.
It’s not just customer interactions that have changed. 65% of respondents indicated that their expectations of brands’ digital experience have also changed due to the pandemic. After a year of engaging with brands digitally instead of face-to-face, customers are increasingly expecting more from a company’s digital offerings.
Customers are looking for digital experiences that deliver a frictionless experience and meet their individual, personalized needs: 56% of respondents indicated they only buy from brands that understand and respect their communication preferences, and 53% prefer to buy from brands that remember or auto-fill their details.
Providing an excellent digital customer experience can make or break a sale. 44% of respondents said they will try to only interact with businesses that offer an excellent experience online, and 28% said they won’t use a brand at all if the experience isn’t excellent. This means that for 72% of respondents, having an excellent digital customer experience is a key factor in their purchasing decision.
The good news is that with increasing expectations comes the opportunity to win customer loyalty. In fact, 66% of our survey respondents indicated they were more likely to buy again from brands which treated them like an individual—in other words, brands who offered truly personalized customer experiences.
Investing in a digital experience platform
These responses demonstrate an ongoing trend in customer experience: customer expectations—especially around digital offerings—are continually increasing. Being able to deliver an exceptional digital customer experience is now a key differentiator.
A digital experience platform can help your organization develop and deliver rich, personalized communications that map to every critical touchpoint in the customer journey. With digital technologies supporting your digital experience strategy, your organization can create personalized experiences that resonate with audiences on any device, and adapt to changing customer expectations with new ways to sell, engage and assist.
This research was conducted by 3Gem in April 2021, and 27,000 consumers were anonymously surveyed across the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, USA, Canada, Brazil, Japan, India, Australia and Singapore.
The development of application programming interfaces (APIs) and API management complements traditional B2B technologies such as EDI. The key is to understand the technology that best meets your business use case. By integrating your API capabilities with EDI, you can better connect and communicate with your entire ecosystem of trading partners.
So when it comes EDI and API, think about partners, not contenders. In other words, it’s not Tyson vs Holyfield. Instead, it’s Laurel and Hardy, Simon and Garfunkel, or whoever your own favorite duo is.
What people say about EDI vs APIs
According to some commentators and experts, the API is the new kid on the block. It’s smart, fast, easy and cheap to develop API connectivity. It enables speedy, real-time data transmission between business applications, devices and people. APIs are great for connecting your on-premises and cloud-based systems. And they can handle most of the B2B interactions that EDI can, so why wouldn’t you use APIs?
(By the way, you can find a more technical overview of APIs by reading our blog: What is API integration?)
On the other hand, EDI has been around since the 1970s and has a reputation for being an outdated technology. But EDI remains solid. It’s safe and reliable. It might not be exciting, but it gets the job done. Do you know what else has been around since the 1970s? TCP/IP, the protocol that runs the Internet.
(Again, you can read a more technical overview of EDI here: What is EDI?)
When asked why more organizations haven’t moved from EDI to APIs, many commentators blame intransigence. They say EDI isn’t going anywhere because so many people use it and are comfortable with it. The program of transition would also be costly and hugely complex. So organizations just try to make the best of what they have.
I find this a little insulting to EDI. It’s as if the capabilities of EDI were frozen in 1987 and haven’t evolved since. For me, it’s the commentators and not EDI that are stuck with legacy thinking.
EDI and APIs: Better together
Compare EDI to APIs and it becomes clear that neither technology is perfect. Each has its strengths and weaknesses. The truth is that the strengths of one often offsets the weaknesses of the other. Together, they represent a formidable solution for B2B interactions.
EDI allows the secure exchange of a wide range of business documents in a standard format that works for trading partners. It can handle batch processing in the volumes needed for today’s supply chains. And it provides security, auditability and reliability, as well as a range of value-added EDI services covering areas such as community management and analytics.
But EDI can struggle with real-time data transfer. That’s an area where APIs are strong, although they’re weaker in areas such as security and data volumes.
There’s also something that’s rarely mentioned: In some ways, the growth of APIs is creating an environment that EDI has evolved to address. While APIs can establish a direct connection between systems, their use can also lead to an explosion in the number of separate API connections an organization must manage—whether those are internal connections between systems or external connections with trading partners.
The challenge of managing multiple connections is something that EDI addressed a long time ago. The original EDI VANs were developed to allow many-to-many connectivity so you didn’t have to worry about the standards and formats of the organization you were trading with.
EDI integration platforms have matured over the years. This has made it much easier to onboard and begin exchanging information with new trading partners. And these platforms are evolving to offer Integration Platform as a Service—such as OpenText™ Trading Grid™—which unifies data integration and management into a single platform regardless of the source. This lets you bring together your EDI and API capabilities, making it possible to build richer and more connected B2B experiences across your partner ecosystem.
If you’d like to know more about OpenText’s EDI solutions, please visit our website.
The cost of poor asset visibility is potentially enormous. Estimates suggest companies are losing almost $25 billion each year in the UK alone. Yet many manufacturers still rely on manual, spreadsheet-based processes to track their inventory of assets. Asset tracking based on the Internet of Things (IoT) can lower costs and risk while boosting performance and productivity. For example, the OpenText™ Asset Intelligence for Manufacturing solution uses a scalable digital twin for asset tracking and optimization.
As the IoT matures, more and more use cases are springing up across manufacturing operations. We are beginning to bridge the gap between physical and digital. And there’s a huge range of benefits to be gained. Asset tracking is perhaps one of the most powerful of these, as this is an area where many manufacturers struggle. But there’s more to asset tracking than sticking an IoT tag or sensor onto your parts or equipment. To gain full visibility of that asset, you must be able to quickly capture and utilize that IoT data and combine it with other information and content. This is why building your asset intelligence capabilities around the digital twin is so important.
Let me explain.
Assets everywhere, except where they should be
This might sound familiar to you: A piece of equipment needs a new part, but that part can’t be located, which means the entire production line is affected. Maybe it can adjust but, in the worst-case scenario, it might have to stop. Or imagine that an asset such as a forklift is needed, but it’s not where it was a couple of minutes ago. While such situations sound trivial, the consequences add up and can become dangerous.
A continual drip of asset-tracking problems can soon become a drop in production, lost revenues and poor customer experience.
IoT-enabled asset tracking allows every physical object to be quickly converted to an IoT device that continually gathers digital intelligence on the asset in ways that weren’t possible before. The IoT device collects asset data and shares it—often in real time—with people and automated systems that can act based on that data.
But it’s not always straightforward to deliver an effective digital asset tracking system. Research suggests that three-quarters of all IoT projects fail. McKinsey found that the top two reasons for this were integrating IoT solutions into existing workflows and managing data. In fact, integrating the IoT into existing workflows was far and away the biggest issue—almost twice as common as any other cause.
Introducing OpenText Asset Intelligence for Manufacturing
To be successful, asset tracking must involve more than the capture and communication of IoT data. It must include the ability to bring different formats of IoT data together securely and integrate that with other information and content related to that asset. That’s why taking a digital twin approach is the most beneficial. This delivers that single point of truth for the entire asset that can then be accessed by the correct people and systems. It’s the only way to deliver end-to-end visibility into the asset and its connection with other related assets.
OpenText Asset Intelligence for Manufacturing is the starting point in the creation of the digital twin. The digital creation of the asset in the OpenText Internet of Things Platform allows for the collection, orchestration and governance of data from the identified and verified asset as it operates. And this information can be integrated into business applications. The data from this digital twin can be securely orchestrated and disseminated to key stakeholders, customers or regulators as required for their roles in the asset’s operation. For a short look at such asset intelligence, check out this video.
Scaling and developing the digital twin
OpenText Asset Intelligence for Manufacturing creates the foundation on which an extensive digital twin for asset track and trace can be built. It’s designed to be flexible and scalable, with future modules including:
OpenText Asset Track for Manufacturing
Building on the advantages gained from Asset Intelligence, the Asset Track solution leverages location-based services to pinpoint an asset’s location in real time.
OpenText Asset Monitor for Manufacturing
The Asset Monitor solution delivers data on the asset’s condition, health and performance to support activities such as condition-based, predictive and prescriptive maintenance operations.
OpenText Asset Insights for Manufacturing
The Asset Insights solution empowers an organization to visualize all of its assets as an ecosystem, and to view an exception dashboard to quickly identify assets that are not performing as expected or are missing in action.
Growing with your business needs, OpenText’s portfolio of IoT-driven asset management solutions provides a starting point for organizations to begin using a digital twin of their physical assets.
To find out more about the OpenText range of digital solutions for manufacturing, visit our web page.
The electronic data interchange value-added network (EDI VAN) is primarily a service provider network that connects all supply chain participants—such as buyers, sellers, logistic providers, banks and suppliers—so they can exchange digital data and documents. This allows them to automate many of their key business processes, streamline supply chain operations, reduce overall spend and improve business efficiency.
However, the secure exchange of business information is no longer the only reason to adopt a digitally enabled supply chain. As supply chains have become increasingly digitized, they have also moved from a “cost of business” to a core strategic function for many organizations.
More than ever, boardrooms worldwide are discussing the topic of ethical business and sustainability. Modern EDI VAN inherently supports ethically and environmentally sustainable practices by reducing paper-based processes. And some EDI VAN providers have been innovating to further enhance the ways in which using an EDI VAN also promotes fair business practices:
Data quality reduces process inefficiencies—By virtually eliminating human error, EDI improves order accuracy so there are fewer reorders and returns that must be processed. Fewer returns and reorders mean fewer shipments in transit.
Large customers demand sustainability—Poor ethical and sustainability practices can have a negative impact on brand reputation and share price. Sustainability is rapidly becoming a cost of business for companies of every size as they look to function within a large manufacturer’s or retailer’s supply chain. The modern EDI VAN can provide proof that a supplier is meeting the standards set by its vendor—and their customers.
Less paper means a smaller carbon footprint—An obvious environmental benefit that EDI promotes is a reduction in paper, ink and other damaging printer consumables. By removing the need to mail business documents, organizations have less demand for postal and logistics services, too.
Business directories help to easily identify and onboard the right partners—Many modern EDI VANs boast directories of businesses that can be quickly and easily connected to. Now, some have further enhanced these trading partner directories with additional business performance information, as well as ethical and sustainability ratings. This makes it easier to choose to do business with those who play fair and have adopted ethical business practices.
By encouraging fair play and more ethical business practices by making it easier to do business with other reputable companies, you can use modern EDI VAN technology to drive ethical operations and sustainability through all levels of your organization’s supply chains. For you and all players within a supply chain, the adoption of a modern EDI VAN is an excellent step toward developing business practices that are both ethical and sustainable.
To learn more about how the OpenText Trading Grid platform can improve your ethical sourcing and surveying capabilities, watch this video and visit our website.
