Category Archives: B2B 3.0

B2BConnex – Connecting Companies the World Over Part II

In our last post, which re-introduced you to B2BConnex, a solution for e-Document Management that was designed to automate the end-to-end purchasing process and targeted at small and mid-sized manufacturing organizations still mired in the world of ERP.

We noted that, since our first posts on e-Document Management and automating the end-to-end purchasing process back in the 2010 time-frame, they have been hard at work and have increased the number of supported document types, added scorecard corrective action reporting (SCAR), the ability to have multiple configurations of the software for different geographies/countries/divisions/departments/plants, an improved shopping cart solution, more integration options out of the box, more usability features, and considerably more customization capability. We then dived into some of the new usability features, UI streamlining, reporting capability and some of the new configuration capabilities.

Today we are going to discuss the improved shopping cart, integration options, configuration options, and a few of the workflows more in depth.

Their catalog-based shopping cart works like you would expect, with the ability to search an individual catalog or all catalogs and be presented with a list of matching products complete with images, (partial) descriptions, price (with volume break) fields, default order quantity and add-to-cart button(s). One unique feature is that the application not only supports multiple languages, but allows each product to be associated with custom descriptions in any language the buyer or supplier chooses. This allows a buying organization to present the same catalog and interface to its users around the world, who can then select the language they want to see results in if the default language isn’t their native language. In addition, currency is also configurable and can be changed by the user as well. When the user goes to check out, the system automatically generates a purchase order template where the user can override the default billing, billing contact, shipping, shipping contact, and (requested) shipping method. Once the user confirms the order, the order, broken down by supplier, will be sent back to the client’s sales order system to generate an order there. Then, through the ERP’s fulfilment functions, the order can be used to generate one or more Purchase Orders which can be sent to the supplier through the B2BConnex Direct platform or Supplier Portal.

Once the supplier receives the PO, they can immediately accept it as is and return a Sales Order Acknowledgement, or, if they can’t deliver (all) of the requested items (at once), they can request modifications to delivery dates and order quantities and even request substitutions. In addition, if the supplier can deliver some products now and some products later, the supplier can split the line items and define the quantity that can be delivered now and the quantity that can be delivered later, each with associated delivery dates, and send the PO back with a modification request.

While the catalog-based shopping cart looks plain and simple with its “old-school” PO style, it’s actually quite sophisticated as it plugs into the B2BConnex Direct platform, which can deliver the purchase orders using a variety of methods, including, but not limited to, delivery through the B2B Supplier Portal, EDI to the supplier’s ERP, and XML or EDI (X12) to the supplier’s order management software. And all of this is configurable by the client in the sophisticated administration panel that allows the customer to define the document types supported, the delivery methods required (down to the plant level if need be), and any required mappings to translate from one format to another (which is important if the customer uses their own units of measure, abbreviations, or terminology and not what is expected in the EDI standard, for example).

In addition, there is a lot of security built in. Not only is there no capability by the supplier or buyer to change fields they have not been given access to (unlike there was in a big system that shall not be named that, for years, didn’t pull in the contract price data from the database but just assumed whatever was in the XML was correct), but there is a lot of security to prevent cross-site scripting, SQL injection, and other common and uncommon hack attacks.

Another neat feature is credit limits, which can be configured for each supplier per order and on aggregate and allow the buyer to be alerted when an order will surpass a credit limit and possibly be rejected by the supplier until Accounts Payable brings the buyer’s account up to date.

Their B2BConnex Direct platform, which functions as their native data mapping middleware, allows them to not only translate document types from one format and standard to another very easily, but also provides an API that they can use to integrate into just about any ERP, finance, procurement, or back-office system of relevance with respect to one of the many e-Document types that are natively supported which include, but are not limited to, RFQs, purchase orders, sales order acknowledgements, ship notices, delivery schedules, goods receipts, invoices, payment reports, payment receipts, RMAs (return merchandise authorizations), and inventory forecasts.

The B2BConnex platform, like the B2BConnex Customer (Buyer) and Supplier Portals, are very configurable — each document type that is sent from and/or delivered to each location can have its own delivery format. For example, if you have one plant offshore that still isn’t on the enterprise ERP, and can’t accept EDI, you can have EDI documents delivered to all plants except that one, which can be required to use the portal.

In addition, customers can manage their own profiles and user base, deciding who has access to what parts of the system and add and remove accounts as necessary. The last thing you want is to have to wait for a vendor to add or remove an account every time someone joins or leaves your organization. While a number of modern systems have this feature, there are still systems out there that work on named-user licenses (and as a solution buyer, you have to watch out for that).

In a nutshell, even though the B2BConnex solution employs an old-school look, it is actually a very modern SaaS application under the covers and definitely worth looking into if you are a small-or-mid-sized organization that is still in the ERP world and need a better solution.

B2BConnex – Connecting Companies the World Over Part I

Since we first introduced you to B2BConnex, a solution for e-Document Management that was designed to automate the end-to-end purchasing process, they’ve been working hard to extend their platform and serve the global operations of their customer base. Even though, as we noted in our first post, their solution was targeted at small and mid-size manufacturing organizations that are still mired in the ERP and need better solutions for their purchasing function, B2BConnex has recently acquired some larger mid-sized companies with global operations and a global supply base. As a result, B2BConnex has been steadily expanding their solution capability and footprint to meet the needs of these larger clients.

As per our post on e-Document Management for Small & Mid-Size Manufacturers, they started out as an e-Document Management solution, implemented as a simple web-based portal solution that integrated with the back-end ERP and/or MRP system, that allowed purchasing and logistics personnel to efficiently manage RFQs, Purchase Orders, Kanban Orders, Shipment Notices, Payment Inquiries, and Invoices and sales to efficiently handle inbound RFQs, sales orders, and inbound shipment inquiries. On top of this, as per our post on automate the end-to-end purchasing process, they built m-way matching and reporting capabilities (and can tell you whether or not the invoice matches the purchase order and / or the goods receipt), scorecard capability, and customer branding capability as well as streamlined Excel integration and a shopping cart that runs on a customer catalog.

Since then they have been hard at work adding more and/or improved document types (including requisitions, specifications, surveys, etc.), scorecard corrective action reporting (SCAR), the ability to have multiple configurations of the software for different geographies/countries/divisions/departments/plants, an improved shopping cart solution, more integration options out-of-the-box, more usability features (such as the ability for a supplier to flip a PO, or line items, into an invoice or ASN and a buyer to flip an invoice, or line items, into a goods receipt), and more customization capability (which allows the entire look-and-feel to be custom skinned, including layout options, by the customer). In today’s post we will talk about the streamlining that B2BConnex has implemented since we last covered their application, the enhanced reporting, and the configuration capability. In tomorrow’s post, we will discuss their improved catalog and shopping cart capability, their B2B Direct solution, and the associated services that B2BConnex offers.

All of the relevant fields of the documents can be edited in-line in the application. For example, once a purchase order has been created, the supplier can request changes online to pricing, quantities, delivery date or other data which are updated in your ERP system once approved . All changes are tracked and a full audit trail is maintained, as well as any or all comments attached to the purchase order. The same holds for the shipment notice, which can be created by a supplier with access to the supplier portal. The shipment notice can be created from a single purchase order or from open line items from multiple orders. Similarly, Corrective Action Requests can be created manually and can reference invoices, shipment notices, or goods receipts and be associated with the requisite line items.

The UI has been streamlined so that when a user logs in, they can quickly view a list of all documents that have been assigned to them and how many of those documents require (immediate) attention. This allows the user — be it a buyer, logistics manager, or supplier — to focus their attention on those items that require immediate attention and prioritize their workday.

In addition, document creation has been streamlined so that a user only has to enter minimal meta-data information, as each document can have as many attachments as is required to create the specification, RFQ, or scorecard. In addition, all documents can be created from Excel sheets, and templates can be exported from the application.

Custom reports can be built on any data in the system, and the reporting capability allows the user to quickly retrieve only those documents that have been recently reviewed, changed, accepted, negotiated, approved, satisfied, etc. and restricted to a supplier, buyer, etc. based on the audit-trails and meta-data maintained by the system. Built-in reports, all of which are configurable, include performance summary, response time, negation detail, time to approval, received unapproved, delivery, price data, first pass yield, open document line, and transit days report — all designed to measure the performance of purchasing.

The configuration capability is quite extensive. The administrator can configure look and feel, fields displayed for view or update, status codes, currencies, languages, scheduling, expediting, user accounts, account policies, logging, file I/O, EDI, portal options, individual geography/department configurations, ERP integration (including users, data field mappings, etc.), partners, partner profiles, items, and catalogues, and other data items of relevance. The solution can be customized to fit the process of the buying organization and the workflow of the applications the personnel are used to.

Come back tomorrow for a review of additional capabilities added by B2BConnex since our last posts as well as a discussion of the services they offer.

Basware: P2P for the Global “E”

Basware is one of the largest players in the global procurement arena. Founded in 1985 in Espoo, Finland (as Baltic Accounting Systems) to deliver enterprise finance software solutions, the company (which is now public and traded on the NASDAQ OMX Helsinki Ltd. as BAS1V) has grown from a small country player to a global platform with over 2,000 international P2P customers that collectively do business with almost 1 Million companies in over 100 countries. Basware supports its global customer base through its operational footprint that spans over 50 countries on 6 continents and includes over 100 partners and resellers.

It’s solutions span the entire P2P (purchase to pay) process, from requisition through payment and post-transaction analysis and includes the Basware Commerce Network that enables over 425 Billion of e-commerce annually. The network currently lists 1.9 Million suppliers and processes over 60 million e-invoices annually through the 60+ e-invoice formats it currently supports, including XML, EDI, and Virtual Printer formats. The network is growing and transaction growth is currently running at 60% year-over-year, and now that they have partnered with MasterCard to provide their customers access to MasterCard’s suite of payment products, it is likely that network growth will accelerate even more now that customers have even more payment options.

One of the most unique features of the platform is the fact that it spans the full AP and P2P cycles, whereas many of the smaller P2P and e-Procurement platforms are Procurement centric, with little support for AP. However, Basware started as a provider of finance solutions and migrated to the e-Procurement space with the birth of e-Commerce, and, as a result, has a firm command of the order-to-cash cycle from both organizational viewpoints.

From the procurement side, the platform contains modules for analytics, basic sourcing (RFX), contract management, catalog management, e-Procurement, and e-Invoicing. From the AP side, the platform contains modules for e-Invoice Processing, e-Invoice Matching, e-Payment, and Analytics. All modules are integrated with a consistent look-and-feel, and all modules are available on top of Basware’s new cloud-based Alusta platform which supports (multi-)enterprise private cloud instances. In addition, the collaboration capabilities and social integrations span the entire platform and all data in the platform is available to the analytics module.

Another unique feature is that Basware has decided that they are a procurement platform, and not a sourcing platform, and that their sourcing capability will remain basic. Basware recognizes that Procurement experts are not Sourcing experts and vice-versa, and have decided that they are going to partner to delivery an industry leading sourcing solution for those customers that need end-to-end Source-to-Pay functionality. As a result, they recently announced a major partnership with BravoSolution to deliver a comprehensive source-to-pay solution that covers all key steps of the sourcing, procurement, and finance process.

In future posts, SI will dive into key capabilities of the Basware Commerce Network; the e-Invoice processing, matching, and payment capabilities; and the analytics platform.

Vinimaya: Taking Their Procurement Marketplace Global, Part IV

In Part I we noted that since we last covered Vinimaya, the B2B Search Engine that was
the next wave in product catalogue management, they have continued building out their base platform, adding (more extensive) auditing capability, workflow-based catalog management, quick-quote (RFX), e-Forms, deep analytics, mobile, and social integration on top of a base platform that supported content management, federated search, powerful connectivity options, personalization and customization, globalization, and an easy to use shopping cart. Then, in Part II and Part III we focussed in on their vTransport technology and their new vQuote, vRank, vCatalog, vAudit, and vAnalytics solution modules. Today, in the final part of this four-part series, we are going to talk about vSocial, vMobile, and their up-coming market indices.

vSocial
vSocial is the social interaction component of the Vinimaya platform. Taking a cue from Amazon, which teaches us that not only do people tend to gravitate to products with reviews but they also want the ability to comment on the products and services they receive and be part of the community, Vinimaya added social interaction capability to their platform. Buyers can post feedback on the goods they procure, suppliers can respond and provide additional details, and procurement can include explanations as to why certain products or services are preferred. In addition, the platform is artificially intelligent, so if there is no feedback for a 14.4 V cordless drill from a given manufacturer, but there is for an 18 V cordless drill from that same manufacturer, the platform will pull the feedback in for the 18 V drill in when a user is viewing the 14.4 V drill to give the user as much information as there is available about the potential purchase. It’s a simple platform, but it works quite well.

vMobile
vMobile is the mobile instantiation of their platform, and one of the most unique offerings on the marketplace. Not only was the Vinimaya platform the first to do real-time federated search across punch-outs, catalogs, and databases and present the results to a user through a single buying platform, but it’s now the first platform to do the same on a mobile device. Designed for a smart-phone, a corporate buyer now has access to all of the goods and services available through the Vinimaya platform on their corporate smartphone, and despite the small amount of real-estate, it is very useable. Vinimaya put a lot of thought into their solution and made search and product retrieval very easy. In addition to the standard keyword search, the mobile solution also supports artificially intelligent barcode based retrieval. If the buyer happens to have the packaging for an item of interest in close proximity (such as the box for the last printer cartridge that requires an immediate reorder when used), she just has to scan the barcode and the solution will find all instances of the product. And if an exact match is unavailable, because the solution is intelligent and retrieves the manufacturer and product description, the search application will find all related products. Maybe the Brother cartridge is currently unavailable from your current suppliers, but a third party Staples replacement cartridge is. The platform will find that option and present it to you. The results are returned in a list and choosing an option brings up a summary of the product details which has an option to add the product to the cart. The cart can be accessed at any time from the app menu bar, which also allows quick access to search, favorites, and history functionality, and checkout can be as easy as one-click as your data is pre-populated. It’s a very slick catalog-based Procurement solution.

Market Indices

Sometimes, not a week goes by where a Procurement doesn’t hear “your contracts suck — I can get the same printer cartridge 5-pack on Amazon today for 5% less” from an office manager or “prove to me that our prices are as good as you say they are and that we are beating the market average because I don’t believe you” from the CFO who only seems to notice Procurement when, a year after a contract has been cut, market prices for a given commodity drop or when the CIO complains that the organization is spending too much on hardware as it’s forced to buy from an overpriced supplier at last year’s prices that are no longer the best price.

In order to get the monkeys off its back, Procurement really needs to be able to demonstrate how good it’s doing — how the majority of it’s contracts are at, or better than, market price, how paying slightly more for that printer cartridge gives it a discount on a range of electronic products from the same provider at 5% below market average pricing, and how IT isn’t factoring in the huge end-of-year rebate the organization is expecting once it meets the million-dollar spend threshold. But to do this, Procurement needs three things:

  1. index data, to know what market prices are,
  2. pricing data, to know what it’s really paying, and
  3. deep analytics, to put two and two together and map reality to potential.

Vinimaya has the pricing data. Not only does Vinimaya manage all of an organization’s punch-outs, catalogs, and pricing databases — but they save every search result to maintain historical pricing data for all products in the database. And, with the recent release of vAudit and vAnalytics, they have the audit trails and the analytics to analyze purchases in detail. That just leave one element to go — the pricing indexes.

The Vinimaya platform crawls a large number of consumer sites (including Amazon, Alibaba, and other online storefronts) and has a huge database of commercial pricing in its archives. This provides the foundation for a consumer price index that will allow an organization to compare its pricing for a product in many consumer categories with the average price charged to a consumer. Vinimaya serves a large number of public sector clients and since public sector pricing is public, this provides the foundation for a market index that will allow an organization to compare its pricing for a product with the average price charged in the public sector for products for which Vinimaya has a lot of data. If you’re beating the public index, you’re doing good but not great. If you’re beating the consumer index, you’re doing okay but not that good. Better shape up. And if you’re not even beating the consumer index, better get your house in order before trying to enforce your contracts on the rest of the organization!

In conclusion, since we last covered Vinimaya, they have made many advancements to their base platform in the last 5 years, but the best may be yet to come. The market indexes are just the tip of the iceberg! More to come in 2014!

Vinimaya: Taking Their Procurement Marketplace Global, Part III

In Part I we noted that since we last covered Vinimaya, the B2B Search Engine that was the the next wave in product catalogue management with their ability to do real-time federated search across all of your supplier databases, catalogues, and punch-outs through a single consumer-like search and shop interface, they have continued building out their base platform, adding (more extensive) auditing capability, workflow-based catalog management, quick-quote (RFX) capability, e-Forms, deep analytics capability, mobile capabilities, and social integration on top of a base platform that supported content management, federated search, powerful connectivity options, personalization and customization, globalization, and an easy to use shopping cart. Then, in Part II, we focused in on their vTransport and their new quick-order and e-Forms functionality, known as vQuote. Today we’re going to dive a little deeper into five of the new capabilities added since our last major review, starting with vQuote.

vQuote
vQuote was specifically designed for the time when multiple bids is the right, or only, option but the situation does not warrant a full-scale sourcing event. For example, unless the organization is bundling the printer cartridge spend with the printers (which is generally NOT a good idea, by the way, since most printer manufacturers make their money off of ink that costs more than blood), running a full sourcing event to award next year’s printer cartridge buy is not worth the effort. Also, many small projects in the public sector, such as network support services at a small local government office, have to go to bid, but aren’t worth full scale sourcing events either. In this case, a quick quote — often to known suppliers already in the system, is typically the way to go. The Vinimaya vQuote solution was designed to make this process as quick, easy, and painless as possible — whether the request for quote was going to existing suppliers in the system or to new suppliers.

Since it was designed specifically for those categories of buys that fit between spot-buy from a catalog and full-fledged sourcing event, Vinimaya was able to streamline the solution significantly. Creating a quote request is as easy as giving a quote a name, specifying line items, selecting suppliers, and providing a due date – which can all be done on a single screen. If the line items are services, a SOW can be attached and quickly sent off. The buyer can see the status of the quote requests on a summary screen, review each quote as it is returned, compare them side-by-side in a summary report, and select a winner just by marking a quote, or line item from a quote, as awarded. It’s as quick and simple as a quoting solution can get and meet the needs of the quoting category they designed for.

vRank
vRank is the ability for a senior buyer or contract manager to ensure that contract items always appear first in the search results, that items from preferred suppliers always appear before items from non-preferred suppliers, and that prohibited items never appear. Basically, the administrator has the ability to assign each item that appears in a search result a rank between 1 (do not include) and 4 (show first), where 3 is (show ahead of other items) and 2 is (normal rank). It’s pretty simple, and it works based on the simple fact that almost half of all people who use search functionality click on the first link that is returned. (Recent Google statistics indicate that a whopping 47% of searchers click on the first search result.) The ranks can be applied to individual items or suppliers, with item ranks overriding supplier ranks). In addition, these ranks can be defined in real-time on every search and will take effect immediately on all future searches. This allows an administrator to define priorities as needed based upon what users are actually searching for and buying, saving a lot of up-front configuration to define ranks for products that might not even be searched for!

vCatalog
vCatalog updates the capability Vinimaya has always had to manage local catalogs in a manner that pushes all of the work back on the supplier. With vCatalog, a supplier that is not technical enough to, or that does not want to, maintain a punch-out or other on-line catalog can upload their entire catalog to the buyer through a web portal. The catalog file is completely validated, and any errors are pushed back to the supplier, with specific details on the error, for correction before it is allowed to be pushed to production.

vAudit
vAudit is what allows a buying organization to take advantage of vendor managed catalogs with confidence. It continuously monitors products and pricing from punch-out, vCatalog, and web-db suppliers to make sure that prices are compliant with contracted prices or original quotes. As soon as a price is detected that is above the contracted price, the appropriate buyer representative is alerted to the issue. The system can be configured in three different ways:

  1. block a purchase for a product over the contract amount
  2. allow the checkout to proceed, but don’t send the PO to the supplier until the price is corrected
    (and alert an administrator to contact the supplier to get the price fixed)
  3. allow the checkout to proceed at the current price, but tag the item for proactive cost recovery

With the vAudit solution, it’s quick and painless to retrieve a report of all items bought above contract or quoted price in a given timeframe, and just as simple to break it down by supplier to allow the AP department to go after suppliers for money owed.

vAnalytics
vAnalytics is Vinimaya’s new reporting engine that was designed to provide Procurement Directors with an understanding of what people were buying and how they were selecting the items they were buying. With the understanding that the purchase process cannot be optimized without a good understanding of shopper behaviour, Vinimaya built a platform that allowed a Procurement Director to understand not only the the top purchases, the top suppliers, and the top buyers, but also the top search terms, the items they led to, the failed search terms, and the actions the buyer took on a failed search.

vAnalytics, which includes a report builder, has all of the standard reporting package features you would expect in a Procurement reporting system and allows reports to be created by supplier, buyer, item, and even checkout process. Common report types include unique users, spend by supplier, line items by supplier, utilization by search time, and out of compliance check-outs (if they are permitted). Since these reports are against real-time data (and not cached in an OLAP system), some can take a few minutes to run, but those restricted to a single-user or supplier will typically be quite responsive. And, of course, all data in the entire Vinimaya platform is exportable.

Vinimaya has also made advancements in mobile and social, but these enhancements will be the subject of a future post on the Vinimaya Global Procurement Marketplace.