The international flow of goods and information requires corporations to tightly integrate internal technology systems and key business partners to ensure the timely exchange of information. Rapid access to real-time data from multiple sources is even more critical to supply chain organizations that rely heavily on trading partners around the globe to deliver innovative products, drive critical supply chain processes and ensure a positive customer experience.
Correll Says... |
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| With the customer’s ultimate experience hinging directly on the global supply chain network of partners, seamless integration is vital for ensuring customer satisfaction and a company’s success. |
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For many companies, the necessity for systems integration demands an infrastructure that is on par with the fast-paced global marketplace, yet is dependent on partner capabilities, regulatory demands and customer expectations. B2B systems integration is increasingly complex for many organizations because suppliers, customers and other trading partners in the network utilize a variety of communication and messaging standards, data formats and integration methodologies resulting in a complex web of business collaboration networks. With the customer’s ultimate experience hinging directly on the global supply chain network of partners, seamless integration is vital for ensuring customer satisfaction and a company’s success. For example, customers expect greater visibility and access to order status, shipment status, associated duties, inventory availability, product details and other information – which feeds from disparate systems.
While supply chain integration is not a new topic for many of you, companies we work with fully understand that integration plays a key role in driving global supply chain performance improvements. Supply chain professionals are constantly striving for “one version of the truth” – a single platform for all activities, data and parties. Rather than the scenario where essential information resides in multiple disparate systems, accurate and effective integration strategies make data accessible and actionable across the entire supply chain organization, including backwards to key trading partners. Many enterprises still rely heavily on EDI, but software technology providers offer a variety of modern capabilities to tackle internal and external integration requirements for today’s supply chain practitioners and IT professionals. Increasingly, new cloud-based business integration capabilities and collaboration networks that deliver pre-built connectivity with trading partners, rapid partner onboarding, end-to-end visibility and improved data integrity are introduced by providers. With a more agile approach to integrating supply chain data, multinational organizations can reduce IT costs, increase supply chain responsiveness and improve data quality throughout the global network.
Here are some of the core integration capabilities companies require:
- Seamless and secure technology integration: Software integration can be a large undertaking for IT organizations. A strategy which enables secure integration across multiple platforms and enterprises with minimal burdens placed on your IT team should be a big part of the plan.
- Automated exchange of data: Global supply chain and trade data needs to be exchanged quickly to positively impact performance. You will want to provide business users the ability to share data quickly and allow IT organizations to effectively address reliability and governance.
- Real-time responsiveness: Business happens in real-time across the globe. Collect and exchange real-time information across multiple internal and external systems to maximize supply chain performance and meet country specific regulations.
- Real-time visibility: Visibility across the global supply chain network is an imperative. Recognize that an integration framework needs to enable and deliver visibility across all relevant trading partners, including suppliers, brokers, carriers, customers, and others.
Integration is a game-changer in terms of ensuring data integrity up and down the entire supply chain to improve the speed and responsiveness of decision-making. As a result of transforming and extending your supply chain integration strategies, your organization can quickly connect with trading partners, fully integrate distinct systems and reach the goal of “one version of the truth” across the end-to-end supply chain.
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