Business Collaboration

In our global economy your company's success depends increasingly on customers, suppliers, and other events beyond the confines of your companies walls. The problems of your vendors and customers are increasingly your problems.

A business collaboration software solution with e-capabilities can help your business focus on its external relationships with business partners and customers.

What is collaboration really all about?
Collaboration simply means "To work together, especially in a joint intellectual effort". By using e-business tools to communicate with vendors and customers, you can eliminate workforce redundancy and improve the efficiency of processes and workflow.

Let's look at some practical examples of how collaborative e-tools can help you communicate more efficiently and more productively with your business partners.

How Do You Keep Track of Your Business?
Let's say you are a manufacturer that subcontracts your service requests. Occasionally some items go from subcontractor to subcontractor without coming back in-house. How do you then know where the item is at any given time? Do you guess based on estimated job dates? Does the first subcontractor call a planner and let him know when he ships a product to another subcontractor? Does the planner have to remember to update your database system manually?

Or, are you one of those manufacturers that communicate in a more advanced way sending the information via e-mail? Even if you do use email, your planner will still need to check for new information frequently and manually transfer that information to the system. If your planner gets busy, it could be several hours before the system is updated, if at all. But maybe you are even more sophisticated and you use Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). If your EDI is a third-party system and sends in batches, do you still have to re-enter data from one system and perform lookups in another?

A clear set of problems emerges. The possibility for errors grows. You lose data, or need to re-enter data multiple times, go to multiple sources to look up information, and last but not least, make decisions based on yesterday's data.

How Do Collaborative Business Tools Help Solve These Problems?
What if your service provider could have a view into your computer system to track items you have subcontracted to him via a warranty service request order? What if the subcontractor could directly enter the problem, the time to complete the request, shipping information and date and time they shipped the items in your system? Wouldn't that save you time, reduce redundant data entry, and increase the flow of information and accuracy of the data? Wouldn't having the right kind of information allow you to make better business and operational decisions?

Let's Go One Step Further
What if when the service provider sent that information, the planner received an automatic notice from the system informing them of this event? And better yet, what if when a second service provider was needed the system notified your planner and confirmed when the product was shipped, received and what the item numbers were. What if the system automatically entered the data and updated it in the subcontractors system? The system could then notify the planner/buyer of any discrepancies and any problems that may exist in your repair chain immediately. That is the kind of efficiency, improved accuracy, and increased real-time visibility that e-collaboration can deliver. It means real time data and single point of entry to look up data.

Why Should it End There
How about having an automatic link on the repair order in the ERP system to the shipper's Web site to trace any overdue items in transit? Or what if you could automatically notify other subcontractors or the customer proactively if there is a service delay? Today's business collaboration products are the tools that can bring on the next major round of productivity. Why? Because of the pervasiveness of the Internet and the appearance of industry accepted standards such as extensible markup language (XML). The Internet means access for all interested parties, and the industry standards mean that data can travel securely and independently of the systems that generated them.

This brings us to the next round of e-tools emerging now. Tools that let customers and vendors do business with you, without having to know anything about your back-office systems. We are talking about systems where the interface has been redesigned so that anybody can immediately use the system with walk-up training including your own staff. Think about how much training time and money you would save if new salespeople didn't have to learn your existing order entry system. Or, if the order entry system was so easy anyone could and would enter their own orders so your staff doesn't have to.

Collaborative E-business tools have come a long way. They can help make today's manufacturers, retailers, and customers operate faster and more efficiently. They can extend the ERP functionality outside your corporate walls, and up and down the supply chain. Collaborative e-tools will fuel the next level of productivity and growth. Can your business afford to disregard these new collaborative technologies?