| As a manager or executive in your company's purchasing or materials management organization, you face many challenges. Overall, you are being asked to find ways to cut costs, shorten cycle times, improve supply chain partner relationships, and generally do more with less. Some of the specific challenges our software can help you address are highlighted in this section. |
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More About Your Challenges and How B2B Connex Overcomes Them |
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Your Challenge - You are spending too much time resolving invoice matching problems because price changes aren't consistently brought back into your purchasing system.
Was a price change agreed to by phone? Did a change request come in by fax and it was misread? Was the change miskeyed into your purchasing system? Did the change request get lost on someone's desk when they went on vacation? How often does the difference just disappear into a variance account?
Invoice matching wastes everyone's time. Not just for the person who has to resolve the difference, but also for every person in the department whose regular tasks are interrupted to help chase down the source of the problem.
You need a process that ensures that change requests are never lost and that there is never a mistake due to misreading faxes or rekeying numbers. |
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B2B Connex Solution - Change requests are never lost.
The B2B Connex Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) Portal provides a collaborative change request process. Your suppliers can make change requests online. Once approved, these changes are uploaded directly to your purchasing system without any rekeying. Your purchase orders are updated using the values keyed in directly by your suppliers. Manage by exception work lists also ensure that change requests will never fall through the cracks again. |
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Your Challenge - You plan to eliminate supplier invoices using Evaluated Receipt Settlement (ERS), but invoices don't always match your orders.
Evaluated Receipt Settlement (ERS) can reduce your costs. But first, invoices have to match receipts before you can eliminate invoices and take the manual matching step out of the process. But how do you accomplish this with MRO orders when not everything is on contract, or less common parts haven't been ordered in over a year, and some products need a price update prior to the purchase order?
You need a process that can ensure an accurate price prior to shipment. Your buyers and suppliers have to communicate quickly, accurately, and if purchase order changes are required, they have to be sent out immediately without someone having to go back into the ERP system. |
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B2B Connex Solution - Invoices match purchase orders.
B2B Connex provides a collaborative process to enable ERS . Both the buyer and supplier can view the most recent version of a purchase order electronically over the web - with no conflicting information from old faxes or emails. Issues are settled faster, price/quantity/ship date are finalized quickly, the ERP system is updated, and invoices match purchase orders. You're ready for ERS. |
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Your Challenge - There is too much buyer administrative time spent with suppliers and not enough improving supplier performance and lowering costs.
There is too much buyer administrative time spent by your purchasing department on suppliers. Your buyers are challenged with improving supplier performance and reducing costs, but spend the bulk of their time on administrative tasks. They are faxing out orders, phoning and leaving voice mails for confirmations, receiving calls and voice mails, negotiating price, quantity and ship date, and then keying changes into the ERP system to start the process over again. Even worse, there is no specific process nor performance indicators on suppliers from the time the purchase order comes out of the ERP system to the time material is received. |
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B2B Connex Solution - B2B Connex reduces buyer administrative time, creates new performance information on suppliers, and lets buyers spend more time on strategic tasks
Information such as purchase orders are sent from your ERP system to B2B Connex, where suppliers are notified by email of the new order. B2B Connex sends out email reminders to ensure a timely acknowledgement from the supplier. The buyer doesn't have to waste time chasing suppliers to verify purchase order delivery. Suppliers view the order through web pages and can take actions such as acknowledge, accept, request a change, or reject. Buyers are immediately notified of the supplier actions and can review any change requests from the supplier immediately through a web page.
If the buyer approves a change, the information is sent to the ERP system without the buyer having to edit the order on the ERP system. B2B Connex captures supplier performance statistics such as supplier response time for a purchase order, and percentage of orders negotiated or rejected, which is not available on the ERP system. This information is available to the buyer for supplier performance reviews. The amount of administrative time a buyer spends on supplier communication is significantly reduced, and the buyer has more time for strategic activities. |
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Your Challenge - Money is lost and errors are created by re-keying orders from distributors and sister plants.
You want to minimize the re-keying of sales orders to reduce your costs and error rates. Distributors and sister plants are sending orders in on paper, fax or email which originate in their ERP systems. Your order entry people spend time re-keying the information and inevitable errors are made. If change orders are made, you re-key them once more. |
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B2B Connex Solution - B2B Connex reduces the re-keying of sales orders by importing files from your distributors and sister plants into your ERP system.
B2B Connex coordinates electronic business communication with key partners through file transfers or direct connectivity to their ERP systems. Information such as purchase orders, sales orders, invoices, and payment notifications, are communicated in minutes. The re-keying of information is eliminated and costs are reduced along with the inherent errors caused by re-keying. |
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Your Challenge - You realize that your Lean Manufacturing goals should extend beyond the shop floor and into your back office processes.
You feel that the efficiencies and productivity increases that flow from the application of Lean Manufacturing strategies could also reduce costs outside of your manufacturing processes. |
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B2B Connex Solution -
B2B Connex automates many of the manual, error-prone tasks that are involved with the communication of business documents between you and your suppliers and customers.
The automation of the processing of documents such as purchase orders, customer acknowledgements, invoices, ship notices, etc. between you and your supply chain partners can lower document processing costs significantly and can also reduce or eliminate the effort spent correcting the errors that are inevitable with manual processes. B2B Connex clients have been able to reduce their focus from managing paperwork to being able to concentrate on establishing more strategic relationships with suppliers and customers. |
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Your Challenge - You want to apply 6 Sigma processes to reduce variation in your supply chain, but you don't have the hard performance data required for analysis.
The problem with analysing supplier performance and other supply chain metrics is that there isn't a rigorous process that tracks fulfillment once your orders and other documents have been communicated. If these processes can't be measured then there is no way to verify the improvements that need to be made to remain competitive in today's markets. |
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B2B Connex Solution - B2B Connex tracks business documents as they flow between you and your supply chain partners.
B2B Connex provides a process that tracks the progress of business documents when they are sent to supply chain partners and also when a partner sends an acknowledgement or makes a change request. Every action that occurs is logged and available for reporting. Actions such as the initial release of a document, when a partner views the document, responds to it, etc. are tracked. Reports are available which measure response times, the frequency of requests for changes, how often goods are delivered prior to approval of changes, etc. |
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Your Challenge - You have to improve cycle time from suppliers.
You have to improve cycle time with your suppliers not only in direct materials, but MRO as well. And faxing out orders just isn't the best process. Faxes get lost, you are never 100% sure the supplier received them, so your buyers follow-up with phone calls and voice mails requesting fax confirmations for critical orders. When orders are changed there is paperwork confusion because the buyer and the supplier may not be working on the same information. You want your order acknowledged immediately, as well as prices, quantities and shipment dates verified or changed quickly. |
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B2B Connex Solution - B2B Connex reduces cycle time with suppliers on direct material and MRO orders.
With pressure from your customers to improve cycle times, you are looking for greater responsiveness from your suppliers. And you are still looking for incremental inventory reductions to save costs. The traditional process of sending out faxes, particularly for rush orders doesn't provide the productivity or optimal speed. It can easily take 24 hours for a rush fax order to be acknowledged. Consequently, buyers manually intervene to accelerate the process. B2B Connex provides the mechanism for immediate delivery, to multiple supplier personnel, with an acknowledgement back in minutes. |
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Your Challenge - You want to accelerate Kanban orders reliably to your suppliers.
You are moving to Lean manufacturing and using Kanban orders to reduce inventory, but faxing just isn't the best process for this time sensitive process. The people on the production floor can never be sure how many times the Kanban order was faxed, whether the supplier received the order or not, and what the status of the order is.
If you turn your Kanban orders into purchase orders, then your buyers are involved in the day-to-day challenges of sending out and confirming purchase orders except Kanban orders are even more critical. |
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B2B Connex Solution - B2B Connex puts the 'lean' back into the process of sending out Kanban orders.
Kanban replenishment signals can be sent from factory floor to B2B Connex either through a scanner, a mouse click on a PC, or another activation method. An email is sent out to the supplier with reminders to ensure a timely acknowledgement. Supplier requests for changes can be incorporated into the process if desired, as well as the Kanban signal, triggering a purchase order. The Kanban order is sent to the supplier faster, acknowledgements are tracked, and there is a visual indicator to the buyer if there is an issue with the order that requires attention. |
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Your Challenge - It is costing you too much accounts payable time to answer the phone calls from suppliers and sister plants asking about payment status.
It is costing you too much accounts payable time to answer telephone calls from your suppliers. Your accounts payable people are fielding calls from suppliers asking for confirmation that you received shipment and the status of their payment. Sister plants in your organization go through the same process because they don't have access to your ERP system. The time adds up, the cost is real, but not tracked -- so the process goes on without improvement. |
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B2B Connex Solution - Shipment and payment status information available electronically.
B2B Connex provides email and web page updates, so that suppliers and sister plants can view received goods status and payment status, without having to call your accounts payable department. Similarly, order acknowledgement, order status and inventory status can be provided to distributors and sister plants. Inbound telephone calls from suppliers to your accounts payable and order entry departments are reduced.
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Your Challenge - You want to send your distributors electronic invoices.
You are sending out hundreds of printed invoices to your distributors and sister plants. They cost money to print and mail and it takes time to mail them which can further extend your receivables. |
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B2B Connex Solution - With B2B Connex you can send electronic invoices directly from your ERP system to your suppliers and sister plants in minutes.
Outbound information such as invoices to distributors and payment status to suppliers or sister plants are sent from your ERP system directly to the ERP system(s) of your partners. Your costs to produce and send invoices to partners are reduced, and costs for your partners are also decreased as re-keying tasks and errors can be eliminated at their end. |
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Your Challenge - You are using Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) and you want the best performance from your supplier.
VMI allows you to incorporate suppliers into your process. But how do you provide visibility to your inventory without your VMI suppliers having to send someone into your plant with the associated costs? And, how can you connect them to your Kanban replenishment signal so they can always receive the signal quickly and reliably? |
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B2B Connex Solution - B2B Connex provides the inventory and forecast visibility to your suppliers and receipt confirmation
Whether you are sending inventory information, or more sophisticated MRP information to your suppliers, you want to ensure they received it and it is up-to-date. B2B Connex can deliver this information through email and web pages so your suppliers do not incur onsite costs to gather the information. Information sent to the suppliers is immediately acknowledged, and if suppliers have issues with the information, there is a visual indicator for buyers, planners, and production personnel. |
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Your Challenge - Distributors are calling about inventory levels and order status.
You are receiving numerous phone calls for up-to-date information on inventory levels and order status from your distributors and sister plants. Your order desk fields the calls, but it takes time to pick up calls or voice mails, and deliver the information over the phone. |
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B2B Connex Solution - B2B Connex delivers finished product inventory and order status information to your distributors and sister plants without the cost of your people's time.
B2B Connex provides email and web page updates, so that suppliers and sister plants can view received goods status and payment status, without having to call your accounts payable department. Similarly, order acknowledgement, order status and inventory status can be provided to distributors and sister plants. Inbound telephone calls from suppliers to your accounts payable and order entry departments are reduced. |
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Your Challenge - Customers need to be updated when delivery dates change.
Your customers are pressuring you to provide delivery dates faster and more accurately to help them better manage their production scheduling. Providing an Advanced Shipment Notification (ASN) isn't timely enough. They need to know the results of your production schedules to feed into their own MRP systems. |
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B2B Connex Solution - Your scheduled sales orders can be shared with your customer.
The B2B Connex Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Portal publishes your sales order information. When your scheduling updates a delivery date, a change notification is sent to the customer to keep them informed. Publishing the order to your customer also provides the ability for them to verify that the order has the correct products identified and that quantities and prices are all correct prior to production. Keeping everyone in the loop means that costly errors are caught before production, rather than after the product has been shipped. |
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