Cooperative Communication

The success of your company depends increasingly on vendors, customers, and other events beyond the confines of your own four walls. The problems of your vendors and customers are your problems.

A business management software solution with collaborative e-capabilities can help shift the focus from internal management of data to external relationships with business partners and customers. That sounds nice, but what is collaboration really all about?

Collaboration simply means cooperative communication. By using e-business tools to communicate with vendors and customers, you can eliminate redundancy and improve the efficiency of processes and workflow.

Let's look at a couple of practical examples of how collaborative e-tools can help you communicate more efficiently and more productively.

How Do You Keep Track of Items?

Let's say you are a manufacturer that subcontracts most sub-assemblies. In some instances, items go from subcontractor A to subcontractor B without coming back in-house. How do you then know where the item is at any given time? Do you guess based on estimated times? Does the first subcontractor call the planner and let him know when he ships it to the next subcontractor? Does the planner have to remember to update the system manually?

Or, are you one of those manufacturers that communicates in a more advanced way sending the information via e-mail? Even if you are, you still need to check for new information frequently and manually transfer that information to the system. If you get busy, it could be several hours before that happens, if at all. But maybe you are even more sophisticated and you use EDI. If your EDI is a third-party system and sends in batches, do you still have to re-enter data from one system and perform lookups in another?

A clear set of problems begins to emerge. The possibility for errors grows. You lose data, or need to re-enter data multiple times, go to multiple sources to look up information, and last but not least, make decisions based on yesterday's data.

How Do Collaborative E-Tools Help Solve These Problems?

What if subcontractor A could have a view into your system to track items you have subcontracted to him via a purchase order? What if the subcontractor could directly enter the finished quantity, shipping information and date and time they shipped the items to the next supplier in your system? Wouldn't that save you time, reduce redundant data entry, and increase the flow of information and accuracy of the data? Wouldn't having the right kind of information allow you to make better operational decisions?

Let's Go One Step Further What if when the vendor sent that information, the planner/buyer received an automatic notification from the system informing them of this event? And better yet, what if when subcontractor B received the item, the data was automatically entered again and updated in the subcontractors system, and in your own system? The system could then notify the planner/buyer of any discrepancies between the finished numbers shipped and received immediately. That is the kind of efficiency, improved accuracy, and increased real-time visibility that e-collaboration can deliver. It means real time data and single point of entry to look up data.

And it Doesn't End There

How about having an automatic link on the order in the ERP system to the shipper's Web site to trace any overdue items in transit? Or what if you could automatically notify other subcontractors or the customer proactively if there is a delay?. Today's e-products are the tools that can bring on the next major round of productivity. Why? Because of the pervasiveness of the Internet and the appearance of industry accepted standards such as XML and BizTalk. The Internet means access for all, and the industry standards mean that data can travel freely and independently of the systems that generated them.

Which brings us to the next round of e-tools emerging now. Tools that let customers and vendors do business with you, without having to know anything about your back-office ERP system. We are talking about systems where the interface has been redesigned so that anybody can immediately use the system with walk-up training including your own staff. Think about how much training time you would save if new salespeople didn't have to learn your existing ERP order entry system. Or, if the order entry system was so easy anyone could and would enter their own orders so your staff doesn't have to.

E-business tools have come a long way. They can help make today's manufacturers operate faster and more efficiently. They can extend the ERP functionality outside your own four walls, and up and down the supply chain. Collaborative e-tools will fuel the next level of productivity and growth. Can you afford to disregard them and remain competitive?