EASY ASSESSMENT & CUSTOMIZED REPORT
Modernizing B2B Integration:
Where Does Your Company Stand?
Forward-thinking companies are modernizing their B2B integration capabilities as a critical part of their digital transformation initiatives, as well as a source of competitive advantages. Without modern B2B capabilities, it's nearly impossible to meet customer expectations for real-time visibility into orders, pricing, inventory, payments, omnichannel fulfillment, and delivery.
Where is your company in its B2B modernization journey? Are you tapping into the full potential of modern B2B and supply chain capabilities? Let's find out.
- Take this brief, 10 question assessment about your business and current B2B integration capabilities.
- See your personalized B2B Modernization scorecard.
- Gain access to a customized report with recommendations and resources, helping to guide you on a path to a successful B2B modernization journey.
01 / 10
How would you describe your ability to connect with and support a variety of partner transaction formats and protocols?
A. Very limited connectivity. We can support very few formats, protocols, and/or transactions.
B. Fair. We have connectivity with some of our top partners, but can only support a few formats, transactions, and/or protocols.
C. Good. We have connectivity beyond our top partners and support a number of transactions and formats - but there is still room for improvement.
D. Excellent! We connect with most of our partners, supporting most transaction types, protocols, and/or formats our partners require.
02 / 10
How would you describe your level of digitization and automation with trading partners?
A. Mostly manual. We're still exchanging a lot of spreadsheets and paper documents.
B. Fair. We have some levels of digitization and automation, but there's lots of room for improvement.
C. Good. We've digitized and automated many of our B2B processes...but we could do better.
D. Great! Most of our key business processes with partners are digitized and automated.
03 / 10
How would you describe your visibility into trading partner transactions and activity?
A. Very foggy. We have little to no visibility into what's happening.
B. A bit hazy. We have some level of visibility, but it's a very manual and time-consuming process to understand what's happening.
C. Okay. We have visibility into some transactions, but it's not very real-time or detailed.
D. Exceptional! We have a 360 degree, real-time view of our transactions, and can easily access the details we need about them.
04 / 10
How "intelligent" would you describe your B2B operations when it comes to understanding and acting upon your data?
A. In the dark. Reporting and analysis are difficult and time-consuming at best.
B. Not very "bright." We are analyzing spreadsheets and running some reports, but they may be days or weeks behind.
C. Informed. We can easily analyze our B2B data and generate reports around transactions, performance, KPIs and more.
D. Insightful! We leverage analytics, alerts, and even AI to detect, predict, and respond quickly across our transactions, partners, and operations.
05 / 10
Roughly how much time does it take for you to onboard a new trading partner today?
A. A month or more.
B. Weeks.
C. Days.
D. Minutes to hours.
06 / 10
How are you keeping up with trading partner inquiries and requests around the status of their transactions?
A. Poorly. It takes excessive time to research transactions and we have a backlog.
B. Slowly. Partner inquiries are on the rise, and it takes some time and effort to address them.
C. Fairly responsive, but we still can't address their questions as quickly as we would like.
D. Very fast and responsive. We're able to respond immediately trading partner requests and inquiries with the right information.
07 / 10
How would you describe your current B2B system(s)?
A. Nonexistent. We don't have an EDI or B2B system in place at all.
B. Basic and/or outdated. We have at least one system in place but it isn't meeting requirements
C. Complex. We have multiple B2B systems that we must manage separately.
D. Fantastic! We have a single, centralized B2B system that meets most or all of our requirements.
08 / 10
Is it easy to make a change in your B2B system when requirements in your business or industry change?
A. Not at all.
B. It's very difficult and time-consuming.
C. Not too bad, but it could be better.
D. Yes, it's very easy and flexible.
09 / 10
Which best describes the performance and scalability of your B2B infrastructure?
A. Poor. It isn't scalable or reliable, and we frequently miss SLAs and/or face downtime.
B. Lagging. It's not performing as well as we need and we often miss SLAs and/or face downtime.
C. Fair. It's not always reliable and we miss SLAs and/or face downtime on occasion.
D. Excellent. It's very reliable and performs as expected - with minimal to no downtime.
10 / 10
Is your current B2B solution "cloud-friendly" and/or integrate with your other cloud-based applications?
A. Not at all.
B. Poorly - it's very limited.
C. Somewhat - but it could be better.
D. Yes! It's very cloud-ready.
Benefits of Modernizing B2B Integration
Here are just some of the benefits companies can achieve by modernizing their B2B integration capabilities:
Improve relationships with your customers and partners
Good relationships are built on trust. And trust is created through honesty and transparency. Modern, innovative technologies make secure, scalable, always-on connectivity possible with all your large and small B2B partners, regardless their level of technological sophistication.
Modernized B2B solutions can also provide greater visibility into what’s happening, and help you prepare for or even prevent any disruptions. You can extend transaction visibility to your line of business staff and your trusted business partners, and provide them easy, self-service access into the status of their transactions. They'll be thrilled when they can get updates quickly at their fingertips, without waiting on IT to research the information for them.
With improved collaboration and responsiveness, you’re not only making an investment in your operations, you’re contributing to positive, productive, permanent relationships.
Improve speed and reliability of your B2B processes
The average organization is managing:
- 2-5 business processes
- 10 different data formats
- 11 B2B protocols
That's a lot to support and legacy systems can't keep up. With the ability to automate complex processes and support for a wide variety of formats and protocols, modernized B2B solutions enable you to support these requirements with ease. They also ensure fast, and reliable B2B exchanges 24/7/365 by enabling:
- Speed
- Real-time responsiveness
- Always-on availability
- Scalability
Reduce ongoing costs and improve the ROI of your B2B operations
The cost of maintaining your own technology infrastructure is high. And the cost of maintaining outdated legacy systems is even higher.
You not only require the staff to run these antiquated operations, but you pay the price of slow performance, costly updates, the inability to easily implement change, and phenomenal complications when trying to integrate with a wide variety of B2B partners.
Modernized B2B solutions help you make a variety of financial improvements:
- Make better use of your current staff's time and skills
- Simplifying management and streamlining processes to reduce ongoing costs of B2B operations
- Connect to partners faster and adapt to change quickly, accelerate time-to-market and revenue
- Gain valuable insights for improving processes and reducing costs across the enterprise
- Invest in innovation for the future
Keep up with changing business and partner requirements
Change is constant. In a business world that’s moving at the speed of thought, you need to pivot without hesitation. But unless you have modern technology that allows you to adapt quickly to change, or to handle an unexpected onslaught of transactions at high velocity, it’s almost impossible to do.
The ability to keep up with trading partners is a big part of this. Companies now deal with a growing volume and variety of suppliers throughout the world. The average organization is managing over 250 customers, suppliers, and partners. To collaborate effectively, they are implementing modernized tools that break down the restrictions of time, distance and technical maturity. The result is real-time, accurate information exchange for every B2B partner in the ecosystem.
Additionally, when you need to enter new markets or geographies, meet an industry requirement, or connect to new back end systems, a modernized B2B solution can help you adapt quickly to change.
Reduce risk and ensure compliance
Today’s innovative B2B technologies have built-in capabilities to accommodate evolving standards and provide alerts whenever anything is amiss. You’re protected from risk of fines and are assuring your B2B partners of security.
Accelerate trading partner onboarding and management
Historically, the onboarding of partners has been a lengthy, complicated, resource-intensive process, taking weeks or months. This becomes a significant problem when you’re consistently adding new partners or changing information about existing ones. This is a common challenge as 59% of surveyed companies indicate that they onboard new trading partners weekly.
Modern B2B technologies not only help to simplify and accelerate trading partner onboarding, but some can even equip your partners to onboard themselves. These tools offer simple, user-friendly interfaces that allow your partners to complete the process quickly.
This means you don’t need staff to deal with phone calls and faxes, and the re-keying information gleaned from other sources. These capabilities reduce the time, cost, and complexity of onboarding and managing a large number of partners - and gives your partners better control. Your partners are up-and-running in hours rather than days, weeks, or months, and you can both reap the benefits of the relationship by generating revenue immediately.
Empower your team and partners with end-to-end visibility
Modern B2B technologies make it possible to achieve 360-degree visibility into the entire B2B transaction lifecycle. That visibility can be extended beyond B2B system administrators to business staff and even to partners, enabling them to quickly see the status of transactions that are relevant to them.
For example, when an order comes in, a wide range of information has to be visible to every relevant participant in the value chain, from partners to employees to business managers to customers, including:
- Has the order been acknowledged?
- Which fulfillment center received it and when?
- When will it ship?
- Has it shipped?
- When will it get delivered?
- Are there any potential issues or delays that may cause a disruption?
Having instant visibility into this information not only helps to avoid disruption but also improves customer and partner satisfaction.
In addition, by modernizing B2B integration capabilities, companies can gain actionable insights throughout supply chain processes, enabling them to mitigate risk and resolve disruptions in minutes - not hours or days. It also helps them identify opportunities for improvement, as well as the spot trends that indicate the need for new or improved products and services.
Reduce unplanned outages and improve performance
Downtime is expensive to everyone in the B2B ecosystem – in time, money and reputation. A disruption at one point can send ripples of disturbance across the entire supply chain, create compliance issues, reduce revenues, precipitate SLA penalties, and impact customer satisfaction.
Modernized B2B integration systems and networks can ensure reliable, continuous performance and ensure your B2B operations are always available.
Capitalize on the benefits of the cloud
The future of business-to-business (B2B) integration is in the cloud. Forward-thinking organizations are transitioning their network infrastructure to a cloud model to reduce cost and complexity. The move is also enabling them to strengthen collaboration with partners and improve agility to meet fast-changing demands at scale.
Modernized B2B cloud services offer flexible cloud options to suit every organizations' requirements and financial resources. Your B2B solution can be hosted and managed in the cloud, hybrid, or on-premise. With a secure, high-performance cloud solution, you can engage and transact with your B2B partners more quickly, and with greater visibility and confidence.
Modern B2B platforms also offer connectivity to other cloud-based applications and technologies via APIs, so you can capitalize on their capabilities as well.
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