In most industries, efficient supply chain collaboration is essential to success. It’s not only the key to profitability and operational excellence, it’s also becoming a prerequisite for building lasting relationships with customers who essentially become the distributors and resellers of the products manufactured.

“In today’s competitive environment, there’s no substitute for a supply chain collaboration solution that can manage crucial details such as releases, purchase orders, shipment instructions, and the full range of transactions that are unique and important to companies,” advises Shanon Ramdaw, Business Development Manager – Infor Services at iOCO, Infor’s Gold Partner in Africa.  

“The key is to streamline and accelerate the online collaboration process with suppliers, ensuring the business can overcome new market challenges and take advantage of valuable opportunities as they arise.”

This collaboration process requires a tool that gives suppliers one point of contact, while offering the company complete visibility over its entire supply chain. Essentially, it should streamline communications with partners, create powerful, real-time data connections, and offer enhanced supply chain management, better supply replenishment insights, and improved supplier performance – all while supporting multiple currencies and languages.

In the digital age, web-based collaboration infrastructure is essential. It is essential to merge traditional Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) communication with newer web-based methods, to deliver a mix of capabilities ranging from fully integrated machine-to-machine EDI transactions to automated fax. With this approach, organisations are empowered to engage in efficient negotiations, supplier performance rating systems are automated, suppliers can be more economical ensuring fair prices are paid for components, and companies have the ability to meet the electronic communication requirements of every customer with a paperless communication system.

“Infor Supplier Exchange, for example, offers advanced online collaboration that is supported between every type of company in the supply chain, including; logistics providers, 3PLs, outside processors, purchase parts suppliers, and discrete purchase order suppliers,” adds Ramdaw.

With the powerful connections that this Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)-agnostic solution offers, the information from multiple versions of disparate ERP systems is combined into a single, universal view for both suppliers and internal users. As a result, companies are enjoying decreased costs, increased Return on Investment, and superior management of their replenishment and supplier performance with one integrated package.

“This improved, real-time communication with suppliers ensures companies enjoy comprehensive status information and a complete overview of their supply chain. The result? Streamlined collaboration with suppliers, improved supply chain operations and world-class performance,” concludes Ramdaw.