Supplier Enablement

Supplier Enablement - new dog old tricks?

There is a ramp on supplier enablement as more and more businesses engage suppliers in electronic trading - aka B2B eCommerce.

That ramp is as a result of buyers looking at their purchase to pay process and moving from paper based transactions to electronic transactions with suppliers. This impacts suppliers and they are also looking for ways to improve their sales operations. As I have written many times this all depends on

c o l l a b o r a t i o n.

In B2B eCommerce the growth is with XML not EDI. However, EDI has been established for a long time and is there anything that we have learned from EDI that could benefit XML?

I was reading an article published by Line56.com that talked to EDI and some of the things that have been done by participants (buyers and suppliers) to ensure that:

i) the process is robust (a function of testing) and
ii) that when someone screws up or does not play by the rules then they get fined

In the case of i) someone has to bear the cost of testing and that usually falls to the supplier, that is, the customer does NOT pay even though it is their trading initiative that the supplier is complying with.

In the case of ii) again the supplier pays if their 'bad' transactions impact their customer as the customer looks to both recover their costs of dealing with a 'baddie' (I figure this is notional) and punish the supplier with a fine to say 'fix it'.

In a closed community of a customer and their suppliers the customer can be an enforcer and that is the world of EDI.

In an open commmunity where their are buyers and suppliers and each has numerous relationships then there is no role for an enforcer. I say that because in an open community you choose to participate rather than in the example above where you are compelled to participate.

Testing will always be important in closed and open communities. Who pays will be an ongoing debate.

The notion of fines is not going to work in an open community.

So, new dog old tricks? You make up your own mind.

Click here to read the Line56.com article

Click here for more on supplier enablement.

posted by FrankB @ Wednesday, August 02, 2006