OpenText GXS sponsored a study which looked at how today's suppliers were dealing with ever complex supply chain related requests from their customers. The study, entitled Enhancing Customer Centric Supply Chains, was conducted by SCM World and Cranfield University. This presentation discusses some of the key results from the study and then looks at how B2B Managed Services helps to address the challenges faced by customer centric supply chains. Updated May 2014
Today’s customer centric supply chains are becoming incredibly complex.Suppliers are being put under pressure from their customers to adopt new technologies, integrate with key business processes and enter new markets around the world. However many suppliers simply do not have the internal resources to support the ever increasing demands being placed on them from their customers.In addition to customer demands, the global economy is just recovering from a major economic downturn and many companies are trying to reduce costs through restructuring their operations and at the same time remain competitive in the market.If companies are to improve the way in which they support their customers whilst at the same time remaining focused on their core competencies then they will need to ensure that they have a flexible B2B platform to support these activities.
Over the past four years GXS has released a number of thought leadership studies to support our B2B outsourcing offering. In 2007 GXS partnered with the Supply Chain Management Forum at Stanford University to get a better understanding of the ROI that companies could realise by outsourcing their B2B infrastructure. On average companies were seeing a 250% ROI on their B2B projects.In 2008 GXS partnered with Hobson and Company to develop a Total Cost of Ownership model so that companies could work out the savings that could be made by outsourcing their B2B infrastructure rather than keeping their B2B inhouse. On average companies were finding a 20%-40% saving by outsourcing their B2B environment.In 2009 GXS partnered with AMR Research to undertake a study to get a better understanding of how companies were running their EPR B2B integration projects today, and one of the most significant statistics to come out of this study was that on average 34% of data feeding ERP systems comes from outside the enterprise.
In 2010 GXS partnered with SCMWorld and Cranfield University to get a better understanding of how suppliers are meeting the increasingly complex demands from their customers. The study, entitled Enhancing Customer Centric Supply chains, was led by Professor Martin Christopher, Emeritus Professor of Marketing and Logistics at Cranfield School of Management.The next few slides will discuss some of the results from the study before then going on to describe how the GXS Managed Services environment can help to enhance customer centric supply chains.
The study had a very strong response rate with over 880 respondents, from all major geographies around the world, from the industry sectors highlighted on this slide.The respondents were primarily from the manufacturing sector with High Tech companies drawing the highest level of response from all those companies that completed the survey.
The study deliberately targeted suppliers who were either manufacturers or distributors to large companies. These companies could either be from a single country or operated plants all around the world.As well as placing numerous and varied demands on their suppliers these large customers also asked their suppliers to adhere to a variety of customised services and their suppliers were expected to integrate themselves to these services as a condition of doing business with them.So today’s suppliers are essentially having to deal with three key complexities here, Regional, Technology and Process based complexities.
At the same time it was often the case that the power in the distribution channel was with the supplier rather than the customer. The reason being, that in many markets the customer base was fragmented and the purchasing power of any one single customer was generally low. In the past, certainly in consumer packaged goods (CPG), it was the brand owners who held the power, e.g. companies such as Procter and Gamble, Unilever and Nestle. Today that power has shifted down the channel to the retailer and, increasingly, beyond to the shopper.
A supplier in the high tech industry based in Europe manufactures in-car infotainment systems for OEM1 and OEM2. OEM1 is a car manufacturer based in Tokyo, Japan and OEM2 is based in Detroit, North America. So this looks at first glance to be fairly straight forward, one supplier supplying two customers, but the demands of these customers is very different. What I have tried to do in the diagram is to map out the complexity of the supplier’s sell side value chain but I have only focused on three degrees of complexity, regional, technology/standard and industry/process.OEM 1 has recently replaced their inhouse ERP system with a system from SAP. They have asked all their suppliers to exchange business documents using either the HULFT file transfer standard, (this is unique to Japan) or HTTPS. OEM1 is connected to the Japanese Network Exchange (JNX), a private network for automotive companies based in Japan. OEM1 is a high volume car manufacturer and they use Just-In-Time (JIT) production techniques which means that supplies must be delivered to their plants within a specified time slot and they require ASNs to be sent through to notify them that goods are enroute to the plant. The OEM needs to send and receive documents in both EDIFACT and XML.OEM2 has slightly more complicated requirements due to the fact that they have manufacturing plants in North America, Mexico and Europe. They have just standardized their global ERP platform on Oracle and they have recently implemented Oracle’s Transport Management System. As OEM2 has additional plants in both Mexico and Europe, there is complexity around supporting invoices and tax compliance in these regions. This company uses the Evaluated Receipt Settlement (ERS) process with their North American operations in order to speed up payments to suppliers. OEM2 is a high end premium car manufacturer and most of their vehicles tend to be built to order. This means that different vehicles need to be assembled on the same production line. They use Supply In Line Sequence (SILS) production techniques to supply components at the right time to the production line depending on which type of vehicle is coming down the line. All major parts or sub-systems are tagged with an RFID tag so that they can keep track of parts movements within their plants.All goods entering North America must now meet the new 10+2 customs compliance standard. OEM2’s plants in North America are connected to the Automotive Network Exchange (ANX) and in Europe their plants are connected to the European Network Exchange (ENX). In North America they would prefer payments to be made through the SWIFT banking network and they are thinking of adopting the EBICS standard for bank payments in Europe. OEM2 has been using OFTP communications in Europe and AS2 in North America but they would like to consolidate on to the new OFTP2 internet standard across all their plants in the near future. Finally, EDI documents should be supplied in both ANSI and EDIFACT standards as required.
The rules of competition are changing. Success in the marketplace today requires much more than innovative products and a strong brand identity. It has become increasingly difficult to differentiate the business using the classic ‘4Ps’ of marketing – Product, Price, Promotion and Place. Customers are more demanding, products are often easily cloned or imitated and markets have become ‘commoditized’.
To succeed in this challenging environment companies need to go beyond the conventional marketing mix and to recognize that competitive advantage is gained through the strength of the relationships that can be forged with their key accounts. 94% of respondents said that they would have to become more competitive through superior processes and service solutions.
As customers have grown larger and more powerful, they have fine-tuned their supply chain to optimize their operations.Each large customer approaches supply chain optimization differently.To minimize inventory some require VMI while others request goods be “drop shipped” directly to the end customerThe result is that suppliers have to support a variety of customized models for their large accountsOver recent years the number and diversity of the requests continue to increase
As companies strive for supply chain optimization there have been a number of process innovations which provide competitive advantageOrdering – Enabling the supplier to manage inventory positions through VMI, JIT, Consignment modelsShipping – Reducing manual processing of goods through cross-docking, floor ready merchandise, mixed palletsSettlement – Eliminating the invoice with self-billing or offering accelerated payment to a vendor via supply chain financeOf course, there is no standard for VMI or self-billing or cross-dockingEach OEM or retailer implements these processes slightly differentlyIt should be no surprise then that 90% of respondents indicating an increase in requests for customized, complex services from large accounts
Consider the various different shipping models that a consumer products company might need to support for its retail customers:Certain Fast Moving Consumer Goods may need to be shipped directly to a storeOther FMCG products may be routed through a DC, but with a cross-docking approach that requires retailer-specific packagingApparel products typically must be “floor ready” ticketed with prices, staged on hangers before arriving at a retailerIncreasingly, retailers are seeking to reduce their inventory on-hand, by requesting “drop ship” of goods directly to the end-consumerDrop-ship is particularly popular for the growing B2C e-Commerce on-line retailing approach for soft goods, home accessories, movies, CDsMost consumer products manufacturers will have to support 2, 3 or perhaps 4 of these modelsThe result is significantly more complexity for outbound logistics operations
Suppliers offer a myriad of technologies to enable customers to place orders. It seems that e-mail and fax predominate but with a significant number of respondents (61%) offering EDI capability or Order Management Portals (55%). So with no dominant approach existing, suppliers must support many different models.
Suppliers have to support numerous different approaches to exchange product and price data with customers.The technology diversity adds complexity to the supply chain.Again no dominant approach exists at the moment
One of the key findings from the study was that 89% of the respondents said that the flexibility of their B2B ecommerce program enables them to differentiate themselves from their competitors.Whether it is supporting a multitude of different communication protocols, document standards or offering support in different regions around the world, outsourcing the management of a B2B infrastructure can provide the flexibility that these suppliers are looking for.
The natural outcome of being “easier to do business with” is a differentiated customer service experience which should lead to revenue growth with large accounts. Almost 88% of respondents agreed (or strongly agreed) with the idea that strong B2B e-commerce capabilities are important for growing business with key accounts.
GXS Managed Servicesis our comprehensive portfolio of B2B Services, including Transact, Expert, Direct, and Application services. Expert Operations Services allow you to engage GXS as a partner to help manage the day-to-day operations of your B2B e-Commerce program including mapping, onboarding and technical support. Our Expert Operations service is flexible. GXS can assume responsibility for an entire complex, multi-national B2B program or handle a smaller subset of selected projects, regions or business partner relationships. Includes:B2B (Hardware, Software, Network) infrastructure managementMapping and data translationTrading community implementationTransaction monitoring and reportingTransaction error resolutionCustomer and Trading partner support
Now there are a number of challenges associated with exchanging data between suppliers and their customers.In the ideal world suppliers would like to just send simple flat files to their customers but it is not as easy as that,For example exchanging large files can dramatically reduce the speed of a network infrastructure, there are many different formats of data that can be exchanged either via machine to machine or entered via a portal environment. There are many different comms protocols, and the data itself may contain errors that have to reworked before it can be used by a customer
Suppliers have to utilise numerous document standards when working with their customers. The problem is complicated still further when suppliers are asked to support their customers in different regions around the world.Many companies use a range of legacy and modern XML based standards and each region in the world may have a slightly different flavour of these document standards.One thing is for sure, today’s suppliers face an uphill battle when trying to engage with customers who use a multitude of different messaging standards.
As shown earlier, many suppliers simply do not have the resources to manage a complex B2B environment, let alone maintain numerous document maps or integrate to back office systems such as SAP or Oracle.One of the growing trends in the IT sector over the past couple of years has been the introduction of cloud based services and this is certainly an area that will change the way in which suppliers engage with their customers. Moving application hosting, platform management and application integration to a hosted or Cloud based environment will help to simplify B2B processes and help the industry to consolidate industry standards. From a business perspective cloud based environments will also help to significantly improve competitiveness in the market and most importantly of all reduce costs and improve ROI.
New sources of low cost competition mean that the pressure on price will continueContinued concentration of markets means that bigger, more powerful customers will demand more from their suppliersConventional marketing strategies have less effectin a time-sensitive, on-demand worldCompanies will compete as much through superior process and service solutions as through superior productsAs complexity increases, manufacturers must further embrace technologyto sustain high customer satisfaction ratings while maintaining appropriate profit marginsA flexible B2B e-Commerce capability is a critical requirement in devising a strategy for managing complexity
This concludes the presentation, thank you for taking the time to watch this webinar.If you should have any questions on how GXS can help to enhance customer centric supply chains, via an outsourced B2B approach, then please contact us via the details shown on this slide.Good Bye