The document discusses trends in the high tech industry and how GXS helps companies in that industry address B2B challenges. Key trends include companies expanding into new markets like Asia and Latin America in response to rising wages and strikes in China. This has made supply chain management more complex. GXS provides a cloud-based integration platform that helps companies consolidate systems, improve collaboration and visibility across global operations, and more easily connect with suppliers worldwide. The platform allows companies to automate processes and onboard new partners faster in order to address demands from trends like mobile and big data. Case studies show how the platform has helped companies in sectors like electronics and computing simplify operations and reduce costs.
One of the biggest challenges facing companies today is trying to integrate a broad cross section of different users, especially those users that may be located in different countries around the world.In recent years many companies have globalised their operations, opening new manufacturing plants in the Far East and establishing new sales offices and distribution centers in new markets. Many companies have implemented multiple instances of ERP systems around the world and a typical ERP related project being undertaken today is to try and consolidate multiple ERP instances into a single instance that can be shared by everyone across the extended enterprise. Many B2B platforms have users or trading partners around the world and in many ways it makes sense to try and obtain operational synergies by integrating ERP and B2B platforms together. Consolidating multiple ERP instances for example provides the ideal opportunity for B2B integration. So we have already talked about consolidation of ERP instances, but what other types of ERP related projects would make good B2B integration opportunities?
Today’s manufacturing industry has some interesting B2B related challenges Continued merger and acquisition activity across the industry is leading to manufacturing companies needing to consolidate multiple or legacy B2B networks across their business on to one common platform. As manufacturers build new plants around the world, there is a continued need to provide connectivity to global manufacturing hubs and trading partners around the world.- ERP systems are at the center of nearly every manufacturing operation and a company can realise significant benefits if they integrate their ERP and B2B systems together.
As manufacturers look to expand into low cost emerging markets they need to onboard suppliers in these regions as quickly and smoothly as possible. Due to limited IT skills in these regions, suppliers must be on-boarded with simple to use and quick to deploy B2B toolsGlobalisation of manufacturing supply chains has meant that it has become more important than ever before to improve visibility into the shipment of their goods, in both the distribution of new goods and shipment of service parts across the aftermarket sector. Finally, recent natural disasters have led to a need to improve the way in which companies respond to supply chain disruptions in order to help increase supply chain resilienceSo let me now briefly discuss each of these in turn.
CAPSA = Chang’an PSA Peugeot Citroen
Manufacturing companies are continuing to look for ways to cut costs in order to become more competitive. Increased adoption of B2B helps to:- consolidate legacy B2B infrastructures on to one common platform - provide improved integration to manufacturing systems such as ERP platforms- Improve internal communications between manufacturing plants and external communication to global trading partners- Provide improved visibility into highly profitable aftermarket service parts supply chains- Reduce costs and improve customer satisfaction levels