| B2B e-Supplier
Service Extends The Backend System Of Retailers To All
Suppliers |
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Introduction
The
retail industry, especially the Hypermarkers and Retail
Chain Stores, are growing
rapidly in Malaysia. Most of
these retailers are targeting the mass market which is very
price sensitive. For retailers to reduce cost and
improve sales, supply chain optimization
and automation
can be one of the important contributing factors.
Furthermore, most of
the retailers are foreign owned and
they are familiar with supply chain automation. As
supply chain automation requires business-to-business
data exchanges and
collaboration processes, B2B is well
positioned to provide such a service and that's
what B2B
had been doing for the retail industry in the past few
years. |
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The Business
Challenge
Most retailers
have hundreds if not thousands of suppliers. The huge number
of document exchanges and complexity of business processes
between the retailers and suppliers create probems in terms
of cost and efficiency as the exchanges are mostly done
manually. The following are some of the main
problems: |
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Documents are sent as faxes which are costly and
inefficient as well as hard to verify data transfer
integrity. |
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Documents received by either the retailers or
suppliers cannot be loaded into their respective
backend systems directly without manual data entry
which is costly, inefficient, time consuming and
error-prone. |
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No visibility of document flow and cannot take
prompt action in exception cases. For example, a
retailer may realize that a supplier did not receive a
purchase order only when goods are not delivered after
delivery date. |
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Long order-to-delivery time as data flow is labour
intensive. | |
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In some cases, a retailer may establish direct
connections with certain key suppliers in order to transmit
purchase orders and invoices electronically or send them via
mail. However, the cost and time involved in connecting with
more suppliers are beyond the capability and interest of
most retailers. As for the suppliers, the cost and time
involved in connecting with retailers directly are also not
tenable. |
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The
Solution
Most retailers and
suppliers in Malaysia have chosen B2B e-Supplier Service as
the solution to supply chain automation. With e-Supplier
Service, connections are established to enable retailers and
suppliers to exchange documents through a single platform
and thus creating a shared infrastructure that promotes cost
and operation efficiencies. Furthermore, each retailer can
still adhere to individual business process requirement and
suppliers can also comply to the business processes of all
retailers easily. The following are the main features of the
solution: |
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Retailers can send or receive documents directly
through system-to-system integartion with B2B. |
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Suppliers can send or receive documents through
web browser, direct system integration or even emails.
In this way, all big and small suppliers can
participate in supply chain automation. |
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Retailers can ensure that own document formats and
business processes are used as B2B provides data
transformation and proces design services for each
retailer. |
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Retailers and suppliers can rely on B2B to manage
the on-going operation and support issues of the
online community. | |
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The
Results
The benefits enjoyed
by participants of supply chain automation are:
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Improve efficiencies and exception handling
because it eliminates routine paperwork, which reduces
administrative costs, product delivery delays and
related supply chain inefficiencies. |
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Reduce cost as the cost of electronic data
exchange is lower than the cost of manual
processing. |
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Improve business process visibility which will
lead to better business process monitoring and
design. |
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Shorten order-to-delivery cycle which will reduce
out-of-stock situation and improve
sales. | |
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More benefits can be realized in future when the number
and types of document exchanges increase over time and the
collabotion between retailers and suppliers are tighten to
further reduce exceptions and reworks. The most notable
example is data synchronization that will lead to lower
frequency of wrong orders. |