Wednesday, May 11, 2011

The Latest on SAP EDI, B2B and E-Invoicing at SAPPHIRE 2011

Here are a couple of sessions that anyone interested in EDI, B2B, e-Invoicing or the SAP Information Interchange by Crossgate at SAP's SAPPHIRE conference next week might want to attend. These appear to be end user led sessions so you can likely learn the good, bad and the ugly.

Session Date / Time:Monday, May 16 13:30-15:00
Session Title: Brown-Forman l SAP Information Interchange by Crossgate
Session Description:

Brown-Forman, one of the largest American-owned spirits and wine companies and among the top 10 largest global spirits companies, sells its brands in more than 135 countries. Entering new markets creates complex customer & supplier integration projects as well as the need to comply with government mandates such as EU and Brazil and Mexico's e-invoicing initiatives. Organizations looking to expand their business into new countries must be able to comply with these integration requirements. Learn how Brown-Forman transformed their approach to Business Network integration to lower the costs of electronically collaborating with their business partners while complying with government mandates. Please join this interactive session limited to 10-12 individuals to understand first hand from The Dow Chemical Company about the selection process, implementation, lessons learned, and key successes.

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Session Date: Tuesday, May 17 10:30-12:00
Session Title: LSI Corporation l SAP Information Interchange by Crossgate
Session Description:

LSI Corporation is a leading provider of innovative silicon, systems and software technologies that enable products which seamlessly bring people, information and digital content together. They offer a broad portfolio of capabilities and services including custom and standard product ICs, adapters, systems and software that are trusted by the world's best known brands to power leading solutions in the storage and networking markets. LSI Corporation had been using e2Open and Sterling Gentran to handle communications, but as part of their evaluation, SAP Information Interchange by Crossgate was recommended as a potential alternative to standardize on one network using normalized content to offer less costly and more efficient trading. In the end, LSI chose to wait on SNC but selected SAP Information Interchange due to the superior integration into PI, using standard idocs and reduced costs compared to the competition. LSI's goal is to reduce costs and have the direct connectivity to their trading partners using standard SAP integration. Phase 1 implementation began in January 2011 and is scheduled to be completed by August 2011 to replace Gentran. E2Open will commence shortly after SAP Information Interchange is live with Phase 1. Please join this interactive session limited to 10-12 individuals to understand first hand from LSI Corporation about the selection process, implementation, lessons learned, and key successes.

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Kevin R Benedict EDI and e-Invoicing Veteran, SAP Mentor, Analyst and Blogger
Join the SAP EDI and SAP Information Interchange group on Linkedin:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2884582&trk=anet_ug_grppro
*Full Disclosure: I am an independent consultant that has worked with and for many of the companies mentioned.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

SAP Awards 2011 Pinnacle Award to EDI and e-Invoicing Partner

SAP will hand out their 2011 SAP® Pinnacle award in the category of “Software Solution Newcomer of the Year” on May 16 at SAPPHIRE® NOW, SAP’s international customer conference held in Orlando, Florida, May 15 – 18.  SAP's Pinnacle awards are presented annually to leading SAP partners that have excelled in developing and growing their partnership with SAP and driving customer success. Winners were selected based on over 150 nominations in 18 categories received from partners and SAP employees.

The 2011 award winner is Crossgate, a company co-owned by SAP and the developers of the SAP Information Interchange by Crossgate.  They are both a managed EDI services provider and a global e-Invoicing services provider that utilizes a cloud computing model.  SAP's field sales teams are reselling these solutions as the SAP Information Interchange.

Last month Crossgate and Hubwoo, both companies that are in the SAP investment portfolio, announced an alliance to better support the SAP customer base with shared business networks and cloud-based procurement and EDI/B2B services.

As more countries mandate electronic invoicing and companies seek more efficient ways to send B2B data exchanges, I believe you will see an increasing demand for these kinds of services.  It appears from SAP's interest in this space that they also anticipate this market trend.

Listen to recent interviews with SAP's Carter Johnson and Hubwoo's Rinus Strydom on these topics.

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Kevin R Benedict EDI and e-Invoicing Veteran, SAP Mentor, Analyst and Blogger Join the SAP EDI and SAP Information Interchange group on Linkedin:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2884582&trk=anet_ug_grppro
*Full Disclosure: I am an independent consultant that has worked with and for many of the companies mentioned.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

B2B E-Commerce Newsletter - May 3, 2011

The B2B E-Commerce Newsletter consists of the best articles, including the links to the original source, that I come across in my daily research on issues related to global e-invoicing, EDI, B2B E-Commerce, e-billing and cloud procurement.  I hope you find it useful.

Now for the news:

Ninety-seven percent of businesses believe that effective use of e-invoicing would help companies to achieve operational efficiency but adoption is hampered by the inability to offer suppliers the possibilities to transact electronically and suppliers being forced to use multiple portals


http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110406005742/en/Basware-Businesses-Globally-Cite-E-Invoicing-Key-Unlocking

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Western Union and 3i Infotech, an information technology and business process outsourcing (BPO) company, have signed an agreement to deliver complete electronic billing and payment solutions to clients of both companies.

http://payments.banking-business-review.com/news/western-union-3i-infotech-to-deliver-e-billing-and-payment-solutions-050411

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City governments within Massachusetts have adopted e-billing programs for the delivery of real estate and property bills.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110405005632/en/Paper-Tax-Bills-Replaced-E-Bills-Time-Massachusetts

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Swiss federal communications office Bakom has introduced electronic bills with effect from 01 April. Bakom customers can use the e-bill function if they have an online account with PostFinance or a bank. Bakom is the first government office to offer the e-bill service, which will be rolled out across all federal administrative offices by end of 2012.