Crossgate, a B2B and EDI Managed Services Provider for SAP, More Than Triples International Business in One Year

Crossgate UK Limited, the global expert in business-to-business integration (B2B and EDI), more than tripled its international customer base in 2008.

Today's global economic uncertainty has led companies to keep a closer eye on budgets, staff resources, process efficiency, and profitability. Because of financial concerns, many companies have been forced to reduce staff and cut back on operating expenses. In order to compete and remain successful, companies must find a way to meet their business objectives with fewer employees. And they must do this at a time when global regulatory compliance is becoming more challenging and costly.

Crossgate has risen to the challenge of helping customers weather economic storms by providing complex value-added B2B services for companies keeping a close eye on their bottom line. Crossgate's growing reputation as a proven industry leader has resulted in the company's international customer base increasing by more than 300% between 2007 and 2008. This rapid growth includes winning key accounts across the United States, United Kingdom, Finland, Italy and France.

Crossgate's Business-Ready Network offers the largest central B2B transaction repository of ready-to-run B2B processes, greatly reducing partner implementation time and expense for companies wanting to expand globally. The company's experience with international B2B requirements, regulations, and standards reduces the time and expense necessary for complex multi-country rollouts, providing companies with a business gateway to the entire world. B2B 360 Services helps companies address multiple international needs in a timely, cost-effective manner.

Implementing SAP upgrades and new applications can have a major impact on a company's B2B integration program. Crossgate's experience and strong partnership with SAP (SAP is a co-owner of Crossgate), along with our joint development efforts, reduces risk and offers stability while saving money for customers.

Crossgate offers the world's first Business-Ready Network, guaranteeing 100% integration of business partners, clients and suppliers. A single connection to the Network means electronic data exchange with any business partner regardless of their technical capability. In addition, Crossgate's B2B-360° Services powered by SAP provide clients direct access to all integrated business partners in the B2B transaction network via their SAP systems. With its legally compliant e-Invoicing Services, Crossgate also provides an innovative and 100% secure solution to cover the entire process of incoming and outgoing invoices, including signatures, global compliance monitoring, and secure automated long-term archiving. More than 40,000 business partners, representing over 10 industries, currently exchange documents and data via the Business-Ready Network.

Crossgate is represented at four sites in Germany, with operations in Atlanta, London, Milan, Paris, and AsiaPac. For more information, visit http://www.crossgate.com./
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EDI, B2B Strategies http://b2b-bpo.blogspot.com/
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What Does it Mean to Have an SAP-Centric EDI and B2B Environment?

SAP's strategy and new paradigm for EDI and B2B is called Business Network Transformation. SAP's solutions like SNC (Supplier Network Collaboration) and TMS (Transportation Management System) are dependent on successful communications with large numbers of trading partners. The B2B communication component becomes a critical part of the success and ROI of these solutions and is best served by being tightly integrated with the rest of SAP's products and strategies.

SAP's Business Network Transformation strategy is an interesting and different paradigm because it takes an SAP-centric approach to EDI and B2B. What does EDI and B2B look like from an SAP-centric view? It starts with the following:

• In 2008, SAP made a significant investment in a rapidly growing company that owns and operates Europe's largest managed EDI and B2B services HUB called Crossgate.
• Crossgate's services are developed and operated on SAP's Netweaver platform. This is now SAP's recommended EDI and B2B managed services (BPO) solution globally today.
• SAP/Crossgate are now developing multi-year roadmaps for EDI and B2B integration solutions for all SAP components that consume and produce EDI and B2B messages
• Pre-configured EDI and B2B services are being uploaded and published to SAP's ESR (Enterprise Services Repository) for reusability and customization.
• SAP users can use and implement new business processes and associated EDI and B2B services in an on-demand SaaS or IaaS model by simply requesting the SAP/Crossgate service and designating messages and trading partners to activate.
• SAP's Global Data Types are being used to normalize the semantics and syntax of data across the SAP environment and they are also being incorporated into the SAP/Crossgate EDI and B2B Automated Business Exchange.
• As new software applications and upgrades are released by SAP, the SAP/Crossgate EDI/B2B services will be released to support them. For example, Transportation Management (TMS) and Supplier Network Collaboration (SNC) have full SAP/Crossgate EDI/B2B message roadmaps. These defined EDI and B2B messages will be available for TMS and SNC customers on-demand in the ESR.
• Part of SAP's strategy may be influenced by their "best run businesses" motto. SAP is designing ways to enable the implementation and management of EDI/B2B to be far simplier, less costly and easier for SAP customers than users of other ERPs.
• SAP/Crossgate customers will benefit from the EDI/B2B connections made by other SAP users on the network. Each new trading partner connection added to the SAP/Crossgate network will then be available for reuse by other SAP users connected to the network. The benefits and economies of scale presented by this model are fun to watch.
• Many traditional EDI vendors and EDI hubs have chosen to compete with SAP in the areas of supply chain management, transportation management and a growing list of business process areas. SAP is not only defending their territory but aggressively supporting new and more effective implementation strategies and SaaS and IaaS models for EDI and B2B that leverage their Netweaver platforms and future product architectures and roadmaps.

SAP customers committed to consolidating and simplifying their IT environments around SAP solutions will want to carefully consider the Business Network Transformation strategy articulated by Jim Hagemann Snabe, member, SAP Executive Board at last years Sapphire and in 2009.

SAP will not be passive and let traditional EDI vendors and industry EDI Hubs take business away from them. Communicating with external business networks (trading partners) is critical to the success of SAP's SNC, TMS, orders-to-cash and procure-to-pay business processes. SAP seems to view these communications and B2B infrastructures now as critical components to both their success and their customers'.

If you would like to discuss this topic in more detail please email me.

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EDI, B2B, Cloud Computing and Business Process Automation - http://b2b-bpo.blogspot.com/
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Implementing SAP e-Invoicing

In these times of economic uncertainty, there are still many reasons a company may want to implement e-Invoicing processes, both inbound and outbound, with their SAP system. Let's start out discussing why a company might want to consider implementing e-Invoices.

• Reduced paper costs
• Reduced printing costs
• Reduced handling costs
• Reduced postal costs
• Reduced DSO - (days sales outstanding) outbound e-Invoicing
• More environmentally friendly (Go Green)
• Compliance with regional tax authorities
• Reduced payment processing costs
• Reduced data entry costs (entering payment information from paper)
• Reduced data entry errors
• Reduced billing disputes
• Reduced paper storage
  

How does a company implement e-Invoicing with their customers? Let's lay-out a plan:

1. The company must notify their customers that they want to implement an electronic invoice process and get their agreement. This is typically done via a letter and/or email sent to the accounts payable department of your customer.
2. The notice should request that the customer read and agree to the terms of the online agreement form, and then register to participate.
3. Once the online form is completed and the customer agrees to accept invoices electronically, the agreement should be automatically emailed to the customer for printing and safe keeping.
4. The online registration form often includes a survey of the customer's EDI (electronic data interchange) or B2B capabilities. Can your customer exchange EDI or other B2B data formats, or do they want to exchange invoice information only via email or a web portal?
5. Once your customer is ready an email should be sent to them with a link to a secure website where they can login and view current and past archived invoices. This reduces the customer support and accounts payable workload. This portal should allow the company to see when the invoice was read and/or downloaded. Unread invoices should be flagged and the company alerted that more customer training may be necessary.
6. e-Invoices often involve a digital signature that is compliant with tax authority regulations and it must be archived. The length of time that electronic invoices must be archived differs widely depending on local regulations. It is often from 5-10 years.
7. If your customer is a high volume customer and can support EDI or other B2B data exchanges then the portal may be useful to check on the status of invoices, but a fully automated B2B process may be more efficient.
8. The portal should provide both you and your customers the ability to verify the integrity of the digital signature. This linked blog article highlights some of the costs and benefits, but let's address some of the issues here.

Large companies often receive tens of thousands of paper invoices monthly. These must be received in a mail room, opened, organized and moved to the appropriate processing centers where the invoices are manually read and the data entered into the accounting system. Many large companies receive invoices in dozens of different locations where this process is repeated. The manual processing of invoices can be a huge expense. The range of costs can be from $18/invoice to $2/invoice dependent on the level of automation and optimization.

• Unprocessed paper invoices prevent management visibility into the true state of liabilities.
• The longer it takes to process an invoice, the more customer service and accounts payable issues arise.
• Unprocessed or slow processing of supplier invoices may prevent companies from realizing early payment discounts that may be offered by suppliers. This article details business process challenges that often need to be corrected before the full value of electronic invoices and accounts payable optimization measures can be realized.

There are several key areas that I would suggest looking at when considering how to optimize the accounts payable processes in a large company:

• Consider the consolidation of disparate software systems into one ERP
• Define and implement formal invoice approval work flows. Preferably automated work flows.
• Consolidate management of invoice receipt into shared service centers
• Implement a scanning/OCR solution to lift data from paper invoices quicker and more accurately, or outsource to a invoice processing managed service provider.
• Implement an automated invoice approval work flow engine
• Convert paper invoices to electronic invoices by implementing EDI, Supplier Web Portals or other B2B strategies.
• Implement an electronic payment system

SAP has recently announced an agreement with Open Text to resell their Vendor Invoice Management work flow and archiving software. Companies like BancTec provide OCR/Scanning and AP Master work flow software as a managed service.

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EDI, B2B, Cloud Computing and Business Process Automation - http://b2b-bpo.blogspot.com/
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The Changing World of EDI, B2B and Extended Supply Chains

The world of business, and as a result EDI, is rapidly changing today. Solutions and methods that worked 5 years ago may not support the new reality of the market. Companies are seeking greater consolidation, standardization, efficiencies and cost reductions. Management is evaluating every service to identify if it is a core service that is required to be provided internally, or is a candidate for outsourcing. The following changes in the market are impacting EDI and B2B operations:

1. The rapid adoption of multi-enterprise supply chains add huge numbers of mappings, integrations and communications to a traditional trading partner community.
2. These emerging requirements will require significant increases in the size and expense of the EDI/B2B department.
3. Mergers and acquisitions are to be expected as the norm – IT staff and infrastructures must be preparted for many integrations and systems consolidation projects.
4. Supply chains, logistics, customers, vendors, government regulation, markets and product lines are changing weekly and IT must be flexible enough to effectively support these changes.
5. The traditional methods of on-boarding or rolling out new EDI and B2B trading partners are far too slow and labor intensive to keep up with the demand.
6. EDI/B2B departments must recreate themselves to meet the NEW demands of this NEW reality.
7. A NEW scalable, fast, flexible and available on-demand EDI/B2B paradigm needs to be adopted.
8. Standardized integration methodologies and technologies must be implemented to enable rapid on-boarding of EDI and B2B trading partners.
9. Data and system harmonization must be accomplished. The semantics and syntax of data must be harmonized and normalized across the enterprise to enable rapid and accurate data integration projects.

Here is an example of changing government regulations:

• In May 2009 the Mexican government will change the way companies can send paper invoices to customers. The new regulations require that companies using paper invoicing will now be required to obtain pre-printed invoice forms certified by the Servicio de Administracion Tributaria (SAT) or adopt a solution to send digitally signed invoices electronically to domestic and international customers.

The two excerpts below describe some of the many changes in the world of EDI and B2B:

• Brown Forman had a steadily increasing backlog of EDI project requests, with each transaction requiring multiple weeks of internal effort, and increasing complexity associated with integrating trading partners in locations around the world. “Hiring new employees or training existing ones to include new global EDI requirements would have been cost-prohibitive for us because it would have been so resource-intensive,” said Kathy Pramik, Brown Forman’s AVP & Director of Enterprise Systems.
• Due to recent acquisitions of various businesses, Nemak’s operations around the world have more than doubled. As a result of this rapid expansion, the complexity and volume of EDI and B2B transactions has also increased. The company had various ERP solutions in place and multiple EDI and B2B platforms, teams and locations to support, with no centralization of EDI or B2B integration management.

Traditional EDI is hard work and takes a lot of time, focus and effort. Today companies are often choosing between doing the EDI/B2B work internally with their own resources or using an on-demand EDI and B2B managed services provider. Some of these on-demand services have tens of thousands of companies already on the service and can easily add thousands of new EDI trading partners efficiently on behalf of their subscribers. It is an interesting debate. Companies need to considers the past performances and cost of their internal EDI teams and systems against the efficiencies and low relative costs of using the large scale EDI service providers. Has their internal EDI team been able to quickly and efficiently on-board the majority of their trading partner community, or did they get stuck at only 10-15% of them.

Is EDI a core service that needs to be operated internally, or is it suited to being subscribed to like a phone or electrical utility? Only the management of the company can make that call, but more and more companies are asking those questions today.

SAP is listening to this debate and has taken steps to address the changing market for EDI and B2B. They are standardizing integration methodologies around Netweaver PI, Enterprise Services Repositories, Global Data Types, eSOA and an investment in a SAP Netweaver PI based managed B2B and EDI services company.

e-Invoicing Requirements for Mexico

Crossgate and SAP are collaborating to help customers meet new Mexican government regulations by providing an integrated e-invoicing service that is certified by the Servicio de Administracion Tributaria (SAT).

In May 2009 the Mexican government will change the way companies can send paper invoices to customers. Current regulations allow paper invoicing using government-issued invoices or customer-generated invoices. But with the new regulations, instead of being able to print their own invoices, companies using paper invoicing will now be required to obtain pre-printed invoice forms certified by the Servicio de Administracion Tributaria (SAT) or adopt a solution to send digitally signed invoices electronically to domestic and international customers.

Crossgate's electronic invoicing solution can help companies meet these changing requirements while helping them streamline their financial supply chains. Manually sending paper invoices is slow and expensive, and processes are not integrated among business partners. These problems result in inefficient financial supply chains with large amounts of aging and uncollected receivables. So for organizations that are still using paper invoicing, the upcoming regulatory changes will actually be beneficial rather than restrictive.

By improving cash management processes and reducing days sales outstanding (DSO) through e-invoicing, companies have more cash available to repurchase stock, expand business operations, and reduce debt, all of which have a positive effect on stock price. The benefits of e-invoicing also spread to community markets, contributing to Crossgate's green supply chain initiative to save paper and help the environment.

Crossgate's e-invoicing service supports the SAP NetWeaver(R) technology platform, providing seamless integration and easy expansion to other processes. By replacing paper invoices with electronic data exchange, companies can realize huge savings in time and staffing expenses. And companies that have been printing their own invoices will not be faced with the cost of purchasing invoices from the SAT.

For companies that are already using electronic invoicing, the Crossgate solution can make it easy for them to ensure compliance with the new regulations. The new rules for e-invoicing will require issuers to use the Firma Electronica Avanzada (FIEL), an advanced electronic signature authorized by the SAT. Crossgate provides an on-demand service that uses the FIEL and meets the technical specifications and standards determined by the SAT. The specific information that must be contained in each invoice will already be configured, and monthly reports will be provided to the SAT as required by the new regulations.

Regulatory compliance efforts are often seen as being time-consuming and difficult, but Crossgate's e-invoicing solution will make it easy for organizations with customers in Mexico to transition to an invoicing process that complies with the new government standards.

Please email me if you would like more information on these e-Invoicing rules and requirements.

Crossgate and SAP Collaborate to Provide EDI and e-Invoicing for Global Spirits and Wine Company

This is an interesting announcement of a company moving to a managed service model for their global EDI, B2B and e-Invoicing because of the following reasons:

• large backlog of customers and suppliers needing EDI implementations
• complexity of supporting EDI globally
• high cost of employing global EDI experts
• high costs of supporting global EDI systems
• need to be compliant with global e-Invoicing regulations
• desire to focus internal employees on core business processes, not global EDI compliance

Crossgate Inc., the global expert in business-to-business integration (B2B), has been chosen by the largest American-owned spirits and wine company to address the company’s unique global EDI and E-Invoicing needs.

Brown Forman owns and markets some of the most well known liquor and wine brands in the world and sells its 35 brands in more than 135 countries across the globe.

Brown Forman had a steadily increasing backlog of EDI project requests, with each transaction requiring multiple weeks of internal effort, and increasing complexity associated with integrating trading partners in locations around the world. “Hiring new employees or training existing ones to include new global EDI requirements would have been cost-prohibitive for us because it would have been so resource-intensive,” said Kathy Pramik, Brown Forman’s AVP & Director of Enterprise Systems. “We want to keep our internal resources focused on value-added strategic business activities, so outsourcing our B2B enablement was the perfect solution."

Ensuring regulatory compliance was another pressing concern for Brown-Forman. “Many countries we work with have created their own requirements for eBusiness processes, like Mexico’s Tax Authority E-Invoicing mandate,” explained Kathy Pramik, Brown Forman’s AVP & Director of Enterprise Systems. “Some of these regulations are very complex such as requirements for mandatory digital signatures and archiving. We can’t afford to overlook any details when we go to enable a new business partner, or everything grinds to a halt while we work out the compliance issues.”

Brown Forman selected Crossgate because they could provide professional B2B methodology and experience in addition to a well-developed repository of ready-to-run B2B mappings, a strong SAP relationship, and 24/7/365 first-level support. In the spring, Crossgate will complete replacement of Brown Forman’s existing business model with B2B 360 Services Powered by SAP, providing Brown Forman with a platform that enables rapid scalability to meet current and future business EDI enablement needs. The Crossgate solution will allow Brown Forman to leverage their resourcing model to scale easily to meet business timeline and/or project needs as the company continues to grow and expand their offerings around the world.

“Outsourcing our B2B enablement to a proven industry leader such as Crossgate will help us deliver EDI projects more efficiently and cost-effectively,” said Kathy Pramik, Brown Forman’s AVP & Director of Enterprise Systems. “Crossgate EDI and E-Invoicing Services are exactly the solution we need to support our global business requirements both now and in the future.”

About Crossgate, Inc.

Crossgate offers the world's first Business-Ready Network, guaranteeing 100% integration of business partners, clients and suppliers. A single connection to the Network means electronic data exchange with any business partner regardless of their technical capability. In addition, Crossgate's B2B-360° Services powered by SAP provide clients direct access to all integrated business partners in the B2B transaction network via their SAP systems. With its legally compliant e-Invoicing Services, Crossgate also provides an innovative and 100% secure solution to cover the entire process of incoming and outgoing invoices, including signatures, global compliance monitoring, and secure automated long-term archiving. More than 40,000 business partners, representing over 10 industries, currently exchange documents and data via the Business-Ready Network.

Crossgate is represented at four sites in Germany, with operations in Atlanta, London, Milan, Paris, and AsiaPac. For more information, visit http://www.crossgate.com

SAP Invests and Becomes a Co-Owner of Crossgate an e-Invoicing, EDI and B2B Exchange for SAP Users

SAP recently announced they have invested and become a co-owner of the EDI and B2B exchange called Crossgate. Crossgate is Europe's largest EDI exchange by transaction volume, and is rapidly growing in the Americas. This announcement, made at SAP's TechEd Berlin, caught many industry folks by surprise. Prior to this announcement SAP had left EDI and B2B issues up to their customers and third party EDI vendors to resolve. This announcement unveils a new strategy and paradigm for EDI and B2B connectivity for SAP users.

The SAP investment also included a strategic position on Crossgate's board, and an aggressive joint development and roadmap strategy between SAP and Crossgate to simplify and lower the costs of EDI and B2B implementations and support.

Paolo Malinverno, an analyst from Gartner, stood up at a press conference in TechEd and asked Leo Apotheker, CEO of SAP, about their investment in Crossgate and the potential next steps. Leo answered, "Our decision to invest in Crossgate is a very important step towards Business Network Transformation and this is our strategy."

Gartner's Malinverno followed up the announcement at TechEd with a paper called, SAP Steps Into the Growing B2B Services Market Via Crossgate and called this investment, "...a decisive move into the business-to-business infrastructure market." He explained SAP's strategy as follows, "The declared objective of this transaction is to keep the strategies of the two companies aligned. However, the main effects will be for SAP to have an out-of-the-box B2B (EDI) services connectivity solution... Access to Crossgate B2B (EDI) services will ship as a built-in service within SAP Enhancement packages, which minimizes the need for application integration...”

SAP's solutions have always required EDI and B2B connectivity through third party EDI vendors, so how is this announcement different? Malinverno describes it this way, "SAP is finally making a more decisive move into the B2B infrastructure market, compared with prior B2B alliances, which were only focused on reselling third-party technology. SAP will likely drive much of Crossgate’s strategy in the future."

In another paper by analysts Maureen Fleming and Jeff Silverstein from IDC called, SAP-Centric EDI Standardization and Low Total Cost of Ownership Move Customers to Crossgate, IDC writes, "Crossgate is fast becoming a disruptive vendor in the business-to-business (B2B) market. In essence, B2B 360 is the default choice (of SAP)." They listed the following key points as reasons SAP customers were using Crossgate's EDI and B2B managed services:

• Strong integration with SAP is well aligned with customers’ initiatives to standardize versions of SAP across regions or globally. Many SAP customers, for example, are engaged in multi-year initiatives to update their many instances of SAP to a single standard, or template, across a region or globally. As part of this effort, many are standardizing EDI communications and have road maps to consolidate to a single B2B vendor.
• Managed services offering are well aligned with customers’ plans to outsource mission-critical, nonstrategic software infrastructure

Geoffrey Moore, author of “Crossing the Chasm” and managing director at TCG Advisors said the following about SAP's investment in Crossgate, “In a world where business networks are emerging as a new unit of industry competition, the gating item has been business network-enabling systems. This latest announcement of a partnership between SAP’s worldwide enterprise capabilities and Crossgate’s existing network of enablement hubs goes a long way to fill that need, allowing business network transformation to become a growth accelerator instead of a roadblock. Crossgate is providing a service extension that facilitates operational excellence regardless of process, global region or trading-partner capability.”

Jim Hagemann Snabe, member, SAP Executive Board explained SAP's investment in Crossgate with these words, “We are providing companies with solutions that are key enablers for business network transformation, allowing them to increase their flexibility to capitalize on market changes and opportunities."

SAP Co-Founder and investor in Crossgate, Dietmar Hopp gave the following statement about the investment, "Our engagement at Crossgate is focused on supporting the international growth in the market for electronic data exchange (EDI). The business model is convincing: A central platform for B2B Data Exchange rather than redundant individual communication and integration platforms. Similar developments have taken place in the utility and telecommunication sector.”

Many of SAP's applications are dependent upon the exchange of electronic data with their business networks (trading partner communities). SAP is embedding Crossgate's B2B 360 services into its upcoming Business ByDesign offering. In addition, B2B 360 services will be available to Business Suite, ECC, Supply Network Collaboration, Transportation Management, All-In-One, and BusinessOne customers via SAP’s Enterprise Service Repository.

It is not a surprise that SAP recognizes how important EDI and B2B are to their applications' and customers' success. However, it is quite interesting to ponder the roadmaps for EDI and B2B within SAP environments. With the eSOA, Enterprise Services Repository, Global Data Types and Netweaver PI pieces all coming together with the Crossgate B2B Automated Exchange investment to deliver a new and much more efficient low cost method of implementing EDI and B2B for SAP customers.

SAP and Crossgate recently collaborated on a webinar called, Cost Control - The ROI of Managed EDI and B2B Integration Services which details some of the benchmark numbers and business cases for implementing EDI and B2B using SAP's Netweaver and Crossgate's Netweaver-based automated exchange.

If you have any questions or would like to discuss this subject in more detail please email me.

Related articles:

• Crossgate and SAP Collaborate to Provide EDI and e-Invoicing for Global Spirits and Wine Company
• Consolidating on SAP ERP and EDI and B2B Managed Services to Reduce Costs
• SAP Users - Negotiating EDI and B2B Formats
• Cost Reductions in the World of SAP, EDI and B2B Integration Services

Inovis Launches Social Network for Supply Chain EDI & B2B Collaboration - Is this the Right Strategy?

Inovis recently announced the launch of a social network site for retailers and suppliers involved in EDI and B2B exchanges to communicate and exchange organizational and contact information as the press release excerpt below describes. I have been pontificating the virtues of a database system to manage trading partner contact information and other meta data such as integration maps, XML schemas, EDI guidelines, etc, for over a decade, but have never got off of my soap box to do anything about it. Why do I agree with Inovis that this kind of data is important to manage? The articles below highlight the challenges and importance of managing trading partner information effectively. Any Professional EDI or B2B Manager will recognize and appreciate the need to effectively solve the issues listed below if they want to implement EDI or B2B with dozens, hundreds or even thousands of trading partners.

1. http://b2b-bpo.blogspot.com/2008/12/edi-message-implementation-information.html
2. http://b2b-bpo.blogspot.com/2009/02/relationship-management-for-edi-b2b-and.html
3. http://b2b-bpo.blogspot.com/2009/01/business-network-enablement-challenge.html
4. http://b2b-bpo.blogspot.com/2008/12/uddi-and-business-network.html
5. http://b2b-bpo.blogspot.com/2008/12/edib2b-messages-can-not-be-implemented.html

Inovis excerpt:

Atlanta, GA — February 10, 2009 — Inovis, a provider of business community management services, today announced general availability of a social networking service for supply chains modeled after popular consumer websites such as Facebook and LinkedIn. The Inovis Social Network creates secure online communities for retailers and suppliers to communicate and exchange organization and contact information.

Users sign into the web site to access a secure view of their colleagues at trading partners and update their contact details and their company's trading profile, ensuring their latest data is available to their business community. When a supply chain manager finds an error or problem in a purchase order or shipment, they can use the Inovis Social Network application to identify and contact the right person at the supplier, third-party logistics (3PL) provider or contract manufacturer who can best resolve them before it causes delays and errors in the supply chain.

I am now going to climb back on my soap box and issue a proposal - EDI and B2B managed services hubs are now all starting to develop repositories to manage trading partner and EDI message related information. It would be in the best interest of the global EDI community to insist that EDI hubs, EDI software vendors and anyone else managing EDI services create a standard for sharing trading partner information across the industry. If not, EDI users will find themselves constantly needing to re-enter this kind of information in all the EDI hubs and B2B business networks used by their partners. Inovis has a repository, but what about market leaders like Crossgate, Sterling Commerce, Seeburger, Tie Commerce, GXS and all the rest?

The repository of EDI related contact and organizational information should really be held in a secure database by an objective third party that is managed by an EDI standards body like ANSI X12, GS1 or EDIFACT. The work of UCCnet and GS1 showed that repositories can be created and shared to provide a global benefit.

Another thought to ponder - Does it make more sense to manage your trading partner network from an EDI vendor centric view like Inovis, or from an ERP centric view? Where are your business processes, supply chains, customers and accounting system and processes managed? It seems to me that the ERP centric view makes more sense. You already have your trading partner's information in the ERP, now you just need to add-on all the EDI and B2B related information. So perhaps it is the ERP vendors that need to create a standard for exchanging EDI and B2B related information. I know that SAP is working on this strategy now with their Business Network Transformation initiatives.