Blogs

The e-commerce landscape today looks vastly different from what it was even a few years ago.

As a supply chain leader, you understand the challenges of navigating through disruptions while managing risk and maximizing rewards.

The retail industry has been rapidly evolving, driven by changes in consumer preferences, technological advancements, and intense competition.

In today’s rapidly changing retail landscape, the collaboration between retailers and their suppliers has become more critical than ever.

While the Great Disruption had a huge impact on health and daily lives, it also significantly influenced businesses.

The global supply chains are becoming more volatile than ever. Customer expectations are shifting, triggering modern technology adoption for many enterprises.

Raw materials are not only the building blocks of any product we consume but also the starting point. From consumer electronics to food products, manufacturers are involved in procuring, shipping, and storing massive volumes of raw material every day.

EDI is a simple electronic format that replaces paper-based documents and is used for intercompany communication in the standard form. Information sharing might occur within an organization or with third-party organizations or business partners.

Many businesses struggle to take their data management and exchange processes to the next level. They may be using an outdated Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) solution, or they may not be using EDI at all. 

Global disruptions have caused supply chains to undergo extensive and unprecedented changes. Since the onset of the pandemic, Gartner research shows that 21 percent of supply network leaders believe their process is highly resilient.

Supply chain disruptions are inevitable. Eventually, a problem will arise that threatens to create costly delays and unhappy customers.

The post disruption New Normal brings with it valuable lessons as we begin the new year. The importance of flexibility, visibility, velocity, and resilience are

The post disruption New Normal brings with it valuable lessons as we begin the new year. The importance of flexibility, visibility, velocity, and resilience are

The post disruption New Normal brings with it valuable lessons as we begin the new year. The importance of flexibility, visibility, velocity, and resilience are

While the Thanksgiving holiday has passed and we remain grateful for another wonderful year, we were treated to a visit from the technology elves on our return.

The world is witnessing an unprecedented level of disruption beginning with COVID-19, followed by supply chain issues, and a growing disruption within the labor market.

The global marketplace today can perhaps be described as volatile. Prices are on the rise, shortages are popping up unexpectedly and in

While the number and complexity of supply chain initiatives seem to grow season after season,

As we put the highly turbulent past year behind us, there is one lesson that businesses will take with them into 2021: be prepared for the unexpected. The chain of events which will forever define 2020 impacted businesses across industries and around the world. The pandemic took nearly every business by surprise, regardless of scale, sending waves of disruption across many supply chains. Supply chain in general nearly came to a grinding halt due to global lockdowns and subsequent changes in consumer behavior and demand. This consequently impacted factory output with nearly every warehousing and transportation company finding their operation, their business, themselves and their families, at risk.

In football, good team chemistry between players is the key to gaining a winning advantage over the opposition. The opposition, on the other hand, will pull out all the stops to stand in between your team and victory. Football is a fast-paced game and involves a lot of movement on the field. The players are in a constant struggle of defence and counter-attack. Communication and collaboration are critical, and separate champions from mere contenders.

Dynamics AX is a legacy ERP solution that was offered by Microsoft for mid-sized to large organizations beginning in 2008. Mainstream support for Dynamics AX 2009, 2012, and 2012 R2 ended in 2018, and mainstream support for Dynamics AX 2012 R3 will end in 2021. When mainstream support ends, Microsoft will no longer accept support tickets or release feature updates. Once extended support ends in 2021, Microsoft will no longer release bug fixes or security patches! Upgrading to Microsoft Dynamics 365 appears to be the best course of action for businesses that still use Dynamics AX.

ollowing transportation and transformation, integration is the final step in the EDI process. Whereas transportation provides a pathway for business data, and transformation converts data into a format that the recipient’s system can consume or otherwise accommodate, integration brings the transformed data into the internal or host system. The end-to-end process is always a cooperative affair. This cooperation between endpoint applications enables data transfer between them, improving relationships in a seamless coordination across systems, departments, trading partners, transportation networks, and across oceans.

An EDI-automated procure-to-pay cycle requires much less human intervention, works extremely efficiently, and is much less susceptible to human error. The total processing time is 1-3 days compared to 7-10 days for the manual P2P cycle.

On the surface, this statement seems to make sense of the eternal value-added network (VAN) claim that the advantage of their network is their network. While stated as fact, “the advantage of the network is the network” is only relatively true, depending on who you’re connecting with and whether the network is where you can find your trading partners (or at least some of them). What does that mean for the rest of your trading partners?

Independence Day is now behind us and summer is nearing its end. The 4th of July holiday encourages reflections, reflections that include independence and country. It also includes independence in financial, personal, and business matters. Returning to work following the mid-summer holiday this year, I began to think about systemic independence, specifically the independence of trading partners now more willing than ever to declare themselves independent from the VAN.

Businesses turn to EDI solutions because EDI has proven to improve business efficiency and reduce costs. Compared to manual business processes, EDI helps reduce costs and inefficiencies up to 35%.

Electronic data interchange (EDI) enables the smooth, rapid, and structured exchange of important data between businesses. However, businesses have come to realize that manually entering data to be sent via a third-party EDI solution is still fairly time and labor-intensive. To further enhance business growth, companies that use EDI solutions can automatically synchronize all inbound and outbound partner data with their ERP system.

EDI is the most widely used structured electronic data exchange between organizations. However, not all EDI solutions are created equal. Instead of operating as stand-alone applications that require manual entry and their own maintenance regime, leading EDI platforms integrate seamlessly with ERP software and other business applications to eliminate manual rekeying and duplication of business information.

ECommerce is on the rise. Buyers want access to everything from the comfort of their laptop or phone, and customer journeys that span multiple channels have become the new norm. Because of these and other complexities, success in digital commerce depends heavily on a smoothly functioning supply chain.

In an environment of ever-changing consumer demand, your retail or manufacturing business needs to leverage every competitive advantage it has at its disposal. Modern global businesses rely on electronic data interchange (EDI) solutions to maximize operational efficiency and maintain market competitiveness. Businesses are using EDI technology to improve their operational strategy, enhance supply chain management, and improve operational performance.

The success of your business is inextricably linked to the performance of your supply chain. Even intermittent hiccups in replenishment schedules or minor inaccuracies in demand forecasting can quickly become sources of uncertainty, fulfillment delays, and major business risk. Keeping in constant contact with your suppliers and other vendors is the simplest way to avoid these issues.

For many enterprises EDI is the main source of how revenue flows into the business. It’s often considered the lifeblood of a company. If not done well there can be a great deal of risk and hardship.

PartnerLink is an innovative, process-centric B2B integration solution that enables progressive organizations to build their digital partner ecosystem leveraging APIs and robust EDI capabilities.

Traditional EDI platforms have multiple limitations. Partner onboarding can be time-consuming and frustrating, and communicating with partners that don’t use EDI requires expensive, difficult-to-maintain customization. Complicated error tracking, poor transaction visibility, and vendor rule management lead to expensive chargebacks that can severely impact your margins.

Standalone EDI systems need to be maintained separately from ERP platforms and create a disconnect between EDI processing and other business processes.