Julie Fraser, President of Cambashi Inc., recently wrote an intriguing article in Managing Automation magazine. The article focuses on how a great number of companies rely on outdated business systems that don’t effectively support their current business models.

Her opinion, and it’s one that B2B Connex shares, is that over the last 20 years there have been a number of significant changes in the way we communicate with our network of partners and what they expect from us. The problem is that we haven’t changed our approach to deal with these new realities!

The root of the problem is that systems that made sense 10, 15 or 20 years ago relied on a very limited definition of the supply chain: plan-source-make-deliver and possibly return.

Fraser explains that because partner expectations have changed, our new definition of the supply chain must include: material and supplier substitutions, product design and innovation, aftermarket services, pricing etc.

Does your system take these changes into account?

If not, her solution is straightforward and sensible – we have to improve our approach to collaboration between ALL of the units across our network.

She suggests this can be accomplished by changing our communication processes so they foster true synchronization across our partner network.

By promoting real-time collaboration, our supply chain becomes streamlined, efficient and allows for immediate input and action by anyone in our partner network.

Fraser interviewed Geoffrey Moore, a tech expert for the article. He uses social media as an ideal model for the modern supply chain system and talks about four areas we have to address to create true collaboration with our partners.

1) Mobile – So input can be offered at any time throughout the process.
2) Social – The ability to share facts and insights is crucial. B2B Connex is the first company mentioned as a solutions provider in this area.
3) Ad-Hoc – Because in supply chain management, unexpected events occur and have to be dealt with quickly and effectively.
4) Real-Time – This is the fundamental change that flows from all of the above elements.

If B2B Connex offered one addition to the article’s points, it would be that automation is a vital part of improved collaboration. Many of the time-consuming manual tasks that were necessary in the past can now be taken care of without employee intervention. Automating aspects of our supply chain management leads to increased efficiencies, a significant reduction in human error and allows employees to spend more of their time on core business activities.

If you’d like to read Julie Fraser’s article in full, click here.

For more information about how B2B Connex can help you improve collaboration across your partner network, contact us or click here to learn more.
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There are different opinions about how much time an invoice match actually takes. The real difference lies in how accurate you want to be about the historical data in your ERP system. The more accurate you are about your history, the more accurate you can be in the future.

When we help our clients with ROI calculations we usually start with a 60 minute estimate for an invoice match. The reason we use 60 minutes is from past experience. As we have found in other areas, there are often a lot of small manual tasks that people overlook. Keep in mind that a 2 minute task may seem like nothing, but many 2 minute tasks can add up.

When doing an invoice match, there are 2 variables that can differ. One is the number of receipts; the other is the unit cost. Sorting out the number of receipts is often the easier of the 2 problems. Goods were either received or not, with perhaps some items being returned. Sorting out a price difference can be more of a problem. Price change requests are often discussed and approved verbally, with updates not making it back to the Purchase Order in your ERP system. A month later, when the invoice arrives, it is often hard to remember exactly what was agreed upon.

The Easy Way

One simple way to deal with a price difference is to just take the difference and assign it to a variance account. Of course, your accountants will disapprove of this idea. Another simple way to deal with this would be to go to the purchase order itself and change the price “after the fact”. Both of these solutions are simple and they don’t take very much time at all.

The only problem with these 2 solutions is that you have introduced inaccuracies into your historical data. Your current inventory pricing is incorrect since the goods have been entered into inventory at the wrong price. Incorrect pricing in your inventory means that the costing of your finished goods or repairs is wrong. By not correcting the root problem you will continue using the incorrect price for new orders over and over.

The Accurate Way

When investigating the amount of time taken for an invoice match within your organization you need to consider all of the following activities. These may seem trivial, but every minute adds up.

• How much time does it take your accounts payable person to find the match problem through reporting?
• How much time to they take investigating the number of receipts and the pricing?
• How much time does it take to track down and interrupt the buyer when a problem can’t be found?
• How much time does the buyer take looking through old notes or email or trying to remember a conversation from a month ago?
• Is the AP person waiting while the buyer is checking their notes? If so, you are spending the time of two people not just one.
• Do you end up having to call the supplier to discuss the issue? Do they answer the phone right away or do you have to be interrupted a second time when the supplier responds?
• How long does it take to restart whatever tasks were interrupted?
• Once a resolution is determined, how much time does it take to call up the appropriate records in your ERP to make changes?

All of these things take time. A proper ROI calculation needs to take all of these things into account when adding up the time taken.

The Best Way

The best way to deal with invoice match issues is, of course, to reduce the number of invoice mismatches that you have. The only way to do this is to ensure that prices are correct at the time your supplier confirms their orders rather than waiting until invoice time. The best way to ensure correct pricing at confirmation is to implement a system, like B2B Connex, to give your suppliers a way to correct pricing before goods are received.

Thank you to all of the people who visited our booth at the 2011 ProcureCon Show in Atlanta. We are happy to announce the winner of our draw for a COBY Google Internet tablet. The winner is Erica Hill, from Brown Shoe.

For a free trial or a demo of our vendor portal solution, please contact us here

I wanted to let everyone know that we will be attending the ProcureCon show in Atlanta from the 1st to the 3rd of February. We will have a booth at the show and we welcome everyone to join us if you can. We will have demo machines available and will also be giving away an Android based internet tablet that can be used for music, movies, email, web browsing, reading e-books, and more.

I hope we’ll see you there.

Thanks again to our friends at Sourcing Innovation. They have recently posted a new article about B2B Connex and our latest shopping cart product which provides your customers an easy to use store front to place orders without the need for contacting a sales representative.

About B2B Connex Store Front

Sales Order Acknowledgements

Sales Order Acknowledgement history is maintained online so your customers can review current and historical orders. This information can be verified and accepted prior to production to ensure there are no misunderstandings. In addition, a change notification is sent to the customer to keep them informed when your scheduling updates the delivery date. Keeping your customers in the loop means that the information that everyone needs is available when they need it.

Advanced Shipment Notices

Once a shipment is complete an ASN can be sent to the customers receiving contact to inform them of an imminent delivery.

Invoices

Invoices are also delivered to the customer Accounts Payable contact using the portal.

To read more about Sourcing Innovations review of B2B Connex http://blog.sourcinginnovation.com/2010/07/29/b2b-connex-automating-the-endtoend-purchasing-process.aspx

For a demonstration please contact us at 1 (866) 317-1951

Thank you for visiting the new B2B Connex web site. B2B Connex is the number one B2B portal solution that easily allows you, your vendors and your customers to track purchase orders, invoices, vendor scorecards, sales orders and any other document that you want through the web.

Here you’ll find more information and news about the B2B Connex web portal solution, company news, upcoming events and new features of our product.

Please feel free to follow us on twitter (http://twitter.com/b2bconnexportal). We’ll also be adding an RSS feed so that you can follow our blog as well.

For a free supplier communication evaluation, please contact us (www.b2bconnex.com/contact-us).