09/14/2022 | Written by Gerard Clancy
Categorized: Supply Chain
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At an IBM event a few years ago, I watched a customer talk about the great benefits they experienced from their Document Conversion Services (fax and email to EDI) solution. Coming from a global, standards-driven, highly automated perspective, I was surprised that he spoke so ebulliently about a solution that sounded like a step backwards to my idealistic ears. After the presentation, I asked some questions about his experiences.
His response was that good spelling or math isn’t exactly commonplace in his client base, and quality internet access even less so. Still, most people could send a fax, and while the earnings from individual business contributions were usually small, together they represented a very large source of income that his competitors would happily tap if he wasn’t ready.
The challenges of staying responsive and relevant
Fast forward to 2022. Economic, social, geopolitical and public health disruptions have fundamentally transformed today’s business environment. The advent of same-day and next-day logistics from internet-based providers has increased the demand for excellent customer service. If a business doesn’t respond quickly enough to manually submitted orders, the shopper will find other vendors who are more responsive, and the business may lose that customer forever.
In our world of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), achieving full automation is more urgent than ever. This is usually based on a mix of traditional EDI and API, but still leaves the “long tail” of manually managed, low-volume trades underserved. Low-income earners, often based abroad, manually load or re-enter these documents into enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Interactions between trading partners and sales, customer processing and order management are riddled with manually introduced errors.
In addition, the cost of living, salary inflation and the so-called “Big Layoff” make it difficult to fill manual data-entry jobs at low wages. This increases the mountain of unprocessed orders.
Processing solutions that transform performance
All of this had led to a huge increase in the demand and relevance of IBM Sterling® Document Conversion Services, which enable companies to convert documents originally sent by fax or email, regardless of complexity, as clean, business rules checked, validated EDI to get the original sender. At the same time, IBM Sterling® Transaction Manager offers a web form-based front end for generating EDI documents in the area of order to invoice.
These two IBM services overlap to effectively cover the range of small partner use cases, from purely inbound, low-volume documents to complex inbound and outbound, highly correlated trade flows. In order to achieve full EDI automation on the enterprise side, it is likely that an enterprise will need both services.
“No trading partner is left behind” is the new mantra of companies investing in solutions to automate their own data processing and strive to provide a higher level of service to their trading partners.
Contact your IBM sustainability software sales representative or IBM business partner, or contact me directly.
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