An OpenText commissioned survey reported that B2B integration generally helps to improve the cost, efficiency, and visibility of business supply chain operations. A new IDC White Paper research report, sponsored by OpenText™, unveils that one of the biggest gaps in business supply chain efficiency globally is the lack of adoption of modern, digital technologies.
As the study commissioned by OpenText suggests, those companies more progressed in their business-to-business (B2B) digital transformation journey considerably outperform those less progressed in aspects like revenue, profit, customer satisfaction, and responsiveness rate.
What were the findings of the survey?
With the current levels of supply chain complexity, global reach and partner/supplier diversity, it has become clear that the ‘old’ ways of doing things don’t work in today’s modern supply chains. This study demonstrates the resiliency of digital transformation, with over 78% reporting that B2B integration has improved the overall performance of their supply chains.
In fact, while 71% of organisations have increased investments within their supply chain, only 6% of the surveyed respondents reported being at their highest level of digital supply chain resiliency maturity, indicating that there is still significant progress to be made and value to be realised by utilising available modern processes and digital technologies that are effecient.
The study by OpenText also highlighted the significant role of artificial intelligence and advanced analytics in the maturity and development of B2B integration. 44% of companies surveyed reported that they are currently using Artificial Intelligence (AI) /Machine Learning (ML) to generate more accurate predictive insights from across their supply chain operations. On the other hand, 17% of these respondents reported that they only use basic analytics.
When asked about the level of improvement of their supply chain by digitizing and automating a range of different kinds of collaboration documents, 80% of the surveyed respondents cite levels of improvement and development, including cost of handling and sharing information, cost of staffing efficiencies, and improvements in Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
What was the importance of B2B integration?
Although B2B integration and supply chain resiliency is very critical in today’s disruptive environment, companies and businesses have often found it difficult to detail the supply chain case fully, justify return on investment, and build all the necessary internal capabilities.
The OpenText Business Network Cloud provides users and companies with the ability to automate business processes and facilitate efficient, secure, and compliant collaboration between people, systems, and things – providing a true foundation for establishing an advanced digital backbone to help support business growth and transformation initiatives.
Advanced supply chain integration capabilities can help support more efficient and effective current approaches as well as new models that translate directly to business performance.
B2B integration capabilities and processing align with the top business priorities of reducing the operational and logistical costs, taking faster time to market, improving data quality/accuracy and progressing general visibility. Recognising the need for a seamless B2B integration and a future-proof, efficient supply chain, OpenText offers a portfolio of end-to-end solutions through their OpenText Business Network Cloud that is always readily available.
By connecting to OpenText’s powerful suite of cloud applications via our secure, scalable and highly reliable OpenText Trading Grid platform, users all over the world can allow internal and external stakeholders to collaborate seamlessly across this single and central network to exchange transactions such as purchase orders, shipment notices and payment instructions.
What was the importance of AI and advanced analytics?
“Connecting, accessing, and analysing data produced by today’s digital supply chains to manage your business is crucial for most organisations. The latest findings from IDC confirm that the future of the supply chain is to bring information and automation together, and OpenText is leading several organisations through these critical business transformations,” said Sandy Ono, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at OpenText.
“B2B integration visibly represents the backbone of a digital-first, resilient supply chain and should be a top priority for those companies and businesses that remain encumbered by arduous manual paper-based processes,” said Simon Ellis, Program Vice President at IDC.
“Ease, speed, quality and choice are all at the heart of our approach and the OpenText Trading Grid has helped to streamline key supply chain processes for users; businesses and companies, reducing the administrative burden and improving the ability to more quickly bring new suppliers into our network,” said Paul Wilkins, Head of Source to Pay, at Co-op Group.
“The ability of suppliers to share information electronically on inbound deliveries via an Advanced Shipping Notification allows our distribution centre teams to plan and allocate resources more efficiently, eliminate paper-based communication and ensure improved inventory accuracy – helping deliver what our customers want, when and where they need it.”
Whether B2B information sharing specifically or supply chains more broadly, the ability to leverage all accurate and available data is rapidly becoming imperative and a source of competitive disadvantage for companies that fall behind, companies that fail to keep up.
