3 ways the cloud clears the path for your B2B Integration strategy

Are you looking to drive more effectiveness out of your infrastructure? If you are like many of my clients you are asked to do more with less, which means supporting more protocols with increasing complexity and a year-over-year shrinking budget. What this means for you is greater concern over security, growing volumes of data and varied requests from lines of business.

Have you considered how to simplify, yet drive growth through increased modernization? This path remains in the cloud and below are the top 3 reasons why others have chosen this path:

1. To retain focus on the core of the business (how you are making money in the first place)
2. To drive teams to more value-add activities, leading to innovation and generating new ideas instead of manually checking errors on an 850
3. To be honest that more budget may not be likely and a software as a service model will suit your long term demand

Read more about how one of the largest privately held firms in New York, Rosenthal & Rosenthal made this decision to use the cloud and clear their path for increasing agility and growth, while still nurturing their clients.  Simple and efficient B2B Integration Services resides in the cloud from IBM Commerce. Learn about the Road to Modernization and how you can move forward on your strategic path with IBM B2B Cloud Services.

No spring cleaning needed in the Cloud

It's that time of year when you should be opening up the doors and windows to make room for the fresh spring air. With the warmer weather, comes the cleaning and uncovering of those tasks you've haven't gotten around to this winter. This habit has a way of making it into our business lives as well. The good news is... if you are using the cloud for your integration activities such as processing Purchase Orders (PO), acknowledging Advance Ship Notices (ASN), and Invoices, there is no need for cleaning. Make sure you have a reputable vendor who has the financial backing to keep it's platform current, who can boast that it's network has never been breached and carries a >99.99% uptime, so you can rest assured. You need not worry about the cobwebs because with a multi-tenant cloud solution like IBM offers on the Sterling Collaboration Network, it will be handling your business-to-business B2B spring cleaning for you. 

Challenge your IT department on their spring cleaning projects and ask 'How many trading partners are in the queue waiting to do business with you?' This question is asking directly about onboarding and how efficient your IT organization is at basic B2B Integration. We find many of our clients have several in the queue and some are keeping thousands waiting. This inability to execute affects revenue which is something your CFO cares deeply about for his/her spring cleaning.

In the past year while you were acquiring these cobwebs and being reactive to your B2B activity, IBM doubled its data center capacity with 13 new SoftLayer data center facilities. These centers link to an ever expanding set of IBM Cloud Services and other data centers. PaaS capabilities with Bluemix, IBM Cloud marketplace, and SaaS solutions built on SoftLayer are a combination no other vendor matches. So consider the cloud and let go of your outdated spring cleaning rituals as the visibility B2B Cloud Services provides is superior to your on-premise capabilities. Read more about our robust network and cloud services capabilities @ IBM B2B Cloud Services. 

How 'clean' is your B2B integration?

Top 2 reasons to unleash analytics on your B2B

1.  Inefficiency within your trading partner community is affecting your revenue
   
2. You must understand the trends among your business partners... now

 There are many reasons to consider analytics, however when they directly affect your revenue, this is where the focus and priority should take place. Ask yourself if you have the tools to gain true insight into your data and make better decisions. Have you done the due diligence to understand your B2B business problems? These problems aren't just yours by the way; they are shared by your finance team and their search for a more efficient Order To Cash (OTC) process. Many people are invested in the success of doing better business with your trading partner community. This shared responsibility for gaining faster time to revenue and understanding the trends of Purchase Orders, Invoices and Advanced Ship Notices requires new levels of visibility.

The good news is there are solutions that utilize analytics and give you the visibility you require. When this visibility extends across the transactions of your business partner community, it has the capability to empower your IT team. With this empowerment comes responsibility to work directly with Finance on gaining new levels of efficiency in your OTC process. 

One of the simple tools you can share with them is B2B Services Reporting & Analytics. This will also be available for B2B Integration Services clients in the upcoming months. Learn more about the product specifics and listen to this webinar on how you can improve your B2B operations today.

In addition, I'll be speaking about this solution in Las Vegas, NV on Weds. Feb. 25th and would love to hear from you on how analytics will be unleashed in your organization to solve your B2B problems. 

What are your New Years Resolutions for B2B Integration?

Are you preparing for a better new year? In 2015, I'd challenge you to "Rethink" by looking at your organization and asking the tough questions you didn't in the past 12 months. Include a resolution for more automation within your Business to Business (B2B) transactions. Take a first step and look at these B2B Stats on Efficiency in this infographic on how automation cleans up your B2B & EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) profitability. 

As you read on, keep in mind your resolution objectives should include asking "How" you can accomplish these 3 things:

1. Increase collaboration among trading partners 

2. Better manage communications to all partners

3. Reduce total cost

Once you have put some consistent and creative thought into these questions, begin investigating where you can affect change and how quickly. As noted in the Infographic above, an average of 5 EDI / B2B systems installed and operational in each or your organizations and this is a perfect starting point to begin a better 2015.  Approaching your trading partner transactions in a more automated way is the quickest avenue for cost savings delivered to your executives. I encourage you to ask the tough questions and focus on better management of your network. Be more informed and learn how to do all of this through modernization with IBM B2B Cloud Services. Make those resolutions work for you while saving costs and driving collaboration into the new year. Cheers to 2015!!