Discover how PartnerLinQ revolutionized a leading North American freight solutions provider in our latest case study. Facing challenges with outdated EDI systems, this esteemed Canadian transportation company, established in 1969, embarked on a transformative journey. PartnerLinQ’s innovative cloud-native platform and robust data model streamlined operations, enhancing communication protocols and scalability. The result?
Clearly one of the biggest challenges businesses have with successfully executing an EDI integration strategy is the onboarding of new trading partners. This challenge appears regardless of network or affiliation and whether the solution is an everything-to-everyone VAN or a simple service.
The fact is that most Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) solutions including those recommended by a partner, an ERP provider, or a marketplace are still onboarding trading partners the same way as they’ve been doing for years; and if nothing changes in the practice, then nothing changes in the process and the same issues persist.
Many initiate the painful and often disappointing cycle of partner onboarding with their legacy product driven by internal needs. EDI service providers, in many instances, possess multiple legacy products and a pressing need to market an updated product or service subscription. The initial internal conflict within the service organization makes these providers slow to respond to requests for new trading partner requests
Additionally, they are often less inclined to deviate from established procedures, hindering much-needed changes to their practices. It is worth noting that at this stage, the practice is inundated with new and inexperienced resources. This poses challenges in adapting to evolving demands and adopting innovative approaches within the dynamic landscape of EDI.
Moreover, change is one of those necessary ingredients for survival in an ever-changing world, which includes newer ways of doing things even with legacy products. Much like fashion, change never goes out of style, and without integrating change into legacy or even antiquated platforms or practices, businesses simply cannot respond to modern EDI integration requirements that are needed in the market today.
Much of this change starts with the ongoing challenge of partner onboarding. The complexity of onboarding new trading partners begins with the EDI solution and how that solution has enabled change from the point where the solution team first encounters that next trading partner. Then there is the issue that companies leveraging EDI with their business partners cause based on a reluctance to provide precise directions by way of EDI specification documentation or samples in a sort of public forum.
Maybe companies do not know what their trading partner profile looks like or how to demonstrate it or just maybe they have never gotten around to producing or updating their specification document. In any case, keeping important EDI information behind a firewall and away from public view until the point where the opportunity to connect has arrived is certainly counterintuitive to making business work. Whatever happened to giving a partner a heads up?
Here are two recent customer examples that demonstrate how businesses are making it harder than it should be; the first example is an internationally recognized mid-market meal-kit foodservice provider and the second, two well-known fashion and apparel dynasties.
Let us begin with the first with one, an internationally known publicly traded mid-sized foodservice provider. In this example the food service provider’s business partner contacted PartnerLinQ asking how they could connect with them via EDI. As experts in the space, we naturally understood both the transactions and the steps needed to enable the EDI connection, so we set out on the path outlined by our customer’s business partner, which according to their web site, was to contact their EDI solution provider via a posted email address. So, we did just that.
Four weeks and dozens of emails later PartnerLinQ escalated the latency to our request to the business partner’s sales team, requesting a personal contact to get the ball rolling. During this process we also had to wait for the specification and sample documents to be forwarded to us to confirm, since there were no postings or even publicly displayed documents of any sort, not even an email address. Due to this oversight both our customer, the foodservice provider, and their business partner would not gain any benefit from using EDI for yet another month, further delaying any ROI that could be derived.
The second example is a well-known German shoe manufacturer, who produces and sells a particular brand of sandals and custom casual shoes known the world over. The problem arose when their business partner, a global footwear company that is home to a diverse portfolio of loved and admired brands and ferocious about fit, encountered an unexpected EDI connection issue more than a year after they switched their EDI systems to a new provider.
The business partner’s new EDI solution provider in this case was reluctant to fix the problem, even to the point of near refusal in remediating the connection issue. The reason provided was that the remedy fell outside of the classic remediation process. This same EDI solution provider doubled down on their refusal to fix the problem even after when one of the parties introduced options into conversation in an attempt to resolve the issue.
While these examples do not necessarily represent how everyone approaches EDI onboarding, best practice stipulates that your team is always responsive to email even when text is not received as intended.
After all, a global understanding of a ‘global standard’ is rather uncommon knowledge and EDI specifications no matter how precise they come are not proprietary. Many of the largest retailers and suppliers understand both, and make it their business to get connected, and in terms of specifications, make this information public.
The second part of these stories and the reason for writing this blog post is to help you get over, under and around such obstacles. Keeping your eye on the goal is critical and recognizing obstacles so they can be avoided in the future comes in a close second.
As you look into your EDI strategy for 2024, below is a list of those obstacles and what you can do to avoid them.
These war stories represent just a glimpse into the myriad experiences we have encountered in our journey, each contributing to our ability to diagnose problems effectively and apply best practices. At PartnerLinQ, we are dedicated to simplifying complexities.
We have been studying our EDI customers and competitors and recognize that digital agility between business partners is what most Multi Enterprise Collaboration Network customers want. Removing friction caused by multiple formats and connections is where we began. Beyond EDI, we’ve added an AS2 solution, an API Layer for Commerce Channel connections and included the ability to connect with a broad ecosystem of Commerce Platforms, Marketplaces, B2B Portals, Social Channels, Credit Cards, and Shipping Solutions
We are committed to making it easy and if you would like to explore your options with a PartnerLinQ Expert, we are happy to help and there is no obligation. Contact us today!
Supply chains are a complex orchestration of people, places, and things. Globalization, pressure from competitors, and increasing customer expectations have all combined to push organizations towards expanded and diverse partner networks, and for Transportation Services and Logistics providers (TSLs), the landscape is even more complex.
As today’s organizations keep looking to add new suppliers, intermediaries, and sales channels to their B2B value chains, legacy EDI solutions cannot stand up to the task. Modern EDI needs to support shared processes, transactions, document types, and communication methods, all while meeting stringent service levels and customer demands.
In this whitepaper, our experts provide pointers to the right tools and a consolidated approach that simplify the partner onboarding process and help modern organizations set up connections with vendors and suppliers at the speed of business.
No-one could have imagined how our way of life would be transformed by the summer of 2020. Changes in our daily lives, changes in our needs, wants, and desires have impacted individuals and businesses alike as we continue to struggle with the vagaries of life and the ‘new normal’.
The world is still unfolding and evolving. With the arrival of every new season, business reacts to a landscape marked by turbulence and turbidity, clouding our vision of the future or at least how we envisioned it. All the while, technological innovation continues as digital interventions work out difficulties of the new normal and hold the key to connecting and enabling disrupted supply chains, displaced societies, interrupted markets, and businesses trying to survive and thrive.
While all industries have, and many are still struggling with the effects of this past year and a half, some clearly bore a bigger brunt than the others. In case of retail, grappling with ‘change’ has been a challenge for most retail establishments over the last couple of decades. The severe impact on their supply chains in 2020-21 has accelerated its growing need for transformation like never before.
The beginning of the pandemic saw people rushing to the stores to stock up on all varieties of items. The surge in demand, however short-lived, brought new volatility and the closing of factories and assembly plants the world over has added layers of stress to an already stressed system.
While large swathes of the population went in and out of quarantine, the retail supply chain overall was damaged by a drastic fall in the availability of products used for everyday life. The spikes in demand this spring and the subsequent turmoil were exacerbated by supply disruptions on one hand and the prolific growth of e-commerce on the other. As borders closed and equipment were redirected, shippers and carriers struggled to get raw materials to the factories and distribute finished goods across the supplier value chain.
Consumers too were sceptical about venturing out to a store, with many taking online purchasing seriously for the very first time; by some estimates, e-commerce achieved its next decade’s forecasted growth in just six months. Even after brick-and-mortar shops were back in operation, e-commerce retained its newly broadened share of retail sales.
The digital experience has impacted all our lives over the last 18 months. As human beings, the way we communicate, teach, shop, pay, learn, and entertain ourselves have all taken a digital turn on what we used to call the information superhighway. We have also taken more kindly to merchants and businesses that changed their modes of operation quickly and reacted to this new sort of normal.
These ready-to-engage-and-win establishments came up with creative and innovative ideas to address our needs and kept our lives moving forward, not to mention our sanity. As consumers, we now seem to expect all businesses to understand our immediate requirements, adapt accordingly, and provide an experience that has a long lasting and positive impact on our daily lives.
Events like 2020-21 do not always have easily available solutions; more importantly, the same set of solutions often cannot be repurposed or retooled to address every crisis or every business, and certainly not as quickly as was necessary in the past year or so. Often, when businesses set out on a new market such as this, they are at a loss trying to determine where to begin and for some retailers, the crisis was an inflection point that allowed them to reassess their entire business processes.
A majority of business leaders agree that the most effective approach is to start by developing a deep understanding of the technology you possess and then working out how such technology can be best utilized to address your immediate needs. While early digital adopters can focus more on accelerating their transformation initiatives, they may need to add some additional capabilities to an already robust order management system or quickly enable services like buy-online-pickup-in-store (BOPIS) and ship-from-store.
On the other hand, organizations that have delayed their digitalization or modernization efforts are now caught in the cross-hairs of unalterable market forces. In addition to a lack of online presence, consumer-facing retailers are facing completely new logistical challenges to facilitate curb-side pickup and consumer delivery. Now, they have to prepare for an environment where a significant percentage of their sales will be forever altered and come from online sources and much more quickly than ever envisaged in any digitalization or modernization discussion.
Big change takes time and with stores getting shuttered and with customers rapidly turning to e-commerce for day-to-day requirements, time is something most retailers and suppliers to retail do not have. Brick-and-mortar establishments are realizing that an online presence is imperative for survival and effective consumer models are what retail suppliers call necessary in the new marketplace
Where deploying an online store would take a few months under normal circumstances, the new ‘normal’ has sped up that requirement. Many a retail technologist has been pleasantly surprised by how quickly they could cut through the red tape to facilitate technology that supported new order fulfilment models. Business teams are welcoming collaboration with their technology counterparts to arrive at a holistic strategic approach for the entire organization.
While early and rapid implementations may not always be perfect, engaged technology partners can get off the blocks in weeks. Once the stores ‘re-open’, organizations can begin migrating back to further optimize and enhance their online capabilities, while keeping their businesses running. This is where having a strategic technology partner like PartnerLinQ can help immensely.
While the pandemic is abating and relinquishing control in many parts of the world, organizations are beginning to blend their learnings from the past with their available capabilities and newly discovered potentials. They will need to be fit for future growth, and be more resilient to subsequent and wide-scale operational risks. Achieving balance will require scaling value chain visibility, risk awareness, and scenario planning.
Today’s landscape demands a deeper understanding of supplier vulnerabilities and enhanced automated workflows. While ordinary supply chain tools provide visibility, driving an alternative supply chain requires much more, including insight into the sales processes and increased visibility into every component of the value chain. Achieving all of this can be a long and arduous journey; but it can be made easier if you have the right set of tools at your disposal.
PartnerLinQ’s supply chain connectivity solution connects your business with your value chain – providing complete visibility into capacity constraints across your first-, second- and third-tier suppliers. Its unified platform supports EDI, real-time APIs, and proprietary file-based formats, allowing seamless integration with e-commerce platforms, digital marketplaces, and your value chain.
PartnerLinQ connects directly with your CRM, ERP, MRP, WMS, and TMS systems, as well as your social channels. The PartnerLinQ platform uses intelligent field-mapping techniques to automatically reconcile your business partners’ data formats to your own; this dramatically reduces onboarding times and leading to improved efficiency with instant benefits and direct B2B communication.
PartnerLinQ’s ‘integration without complication’ facilitates value chain integration and connections with hundreds of supply chain partners, while ensuring a single point of management for your team. It packs enhanced analytical reporting capabilities powered by Microsoft Azure’s serverless, scalable event-processing engine at no extra costs.
Hosted on the Microsoft Azure platform, this unified supply chain solution enables API-led, cloud native integrations, simplified B2B communication, and real-time APIs. PartnerLinQ includes the tools that modern retail organizations can rely on now to build their digital partner ecosystem, achieve high levels of operational efficiency, and gain real-time visibility, to be ready to take on tomorrow’s business challenges.
Leading provider of a wide spectrum of business technology solutions and services Visionet Systems Inc. has launched today its rebranded flagship digital connectivity solution PartnerLinQ. The new innovative capabilities of the solution put it in a league of its own by delivering a complete end-to-end digital connectivity platform for supply chain and eCommerce enterprises.
Digital connectivity for the new era
On the surface, this statement seems to make sense of the eternal value-added network (VAN) claim that the advantage of their network is their network. While stated as fact, “the advantage of the network is the network” is only relatively true, depending on who you’re connecting with and whether the network is where you can find your trading partners (or at least some of them). What does that mean for the rest of your trading partners?
This argument for the VAN being a competitive advantage begins to unravel when you look more closely at trade among trading partners. You’ll arrive at the conclusion that a single network or VAN can’t possibly serve all of a company’s needs.
Read more: VAN independence: So, how does a trading partner break from their VAN?
The advantage of EDI technologies is connecting with your trading partners… and not just some of them. The ability to connect to most or all of them offers the greatest ROI.
However, the complexity of EDI and related technologies presents compatibility challenges. There are many EDI standards, formats, and transactions. There’s X12, UN/EDIFACT, and GS1 XML trade messages. There are also non-EDI formats like JSON, flat files, text files, and proprietary XML message formats. Let’s not forget about the myriad of communication methodologies such as AS2, MFTP, FTP, SFTP and APIs, or the number of transactions and variants.
Clearly, not everyone you need to connect with will be on the same network or VAN. That’s why a VAN must have an interconnect.
An interconnect is a tool that VANs use to communicate with other VANs. It aids in the exchange of EDI transaction documents belonging to individual clients. All VANs use interconnects to ensure delivery of transaction documents among the participants within various VANs. This begins to demonstrate the point of a VAN: connecting with more networks provides a bigger advantage.
The real value of interconnects to VANs was that they help keep new VANs out of the market. Discussing interconnects dispels the notion that belonging to a VAN is an advantage. That’s why VANs don’t like to talk about them. If they did, they’d also have to talk about the characteristics of EDI, which reduces VAN confusion within the consumer.
For EDI to be effective, it needs three layers: transportation, transformation, and integration. In the marketplace, these layers are typically seen bundled together as what has come to be known as the “VAN solution”. However, they should be viewed as separate solutions that work together in harmony to produce the desired results.
A classic example of this harmony can be found in your pocket: your mobile phone. One company produces your device, another delivers your cellular service, and a third provides the local and long-distance lines that you connect to when speaking with someone on a landline.
The three essential components of EDI are:
The transportation layer allows partners to talk to one another. While VANs are dominant in this space, several successful methodologies like AS2, MFTP, FTP, SFTP and APIs also exist; most have been in use for over 20 years. In fact, your VAN may use FTP to connect to your VAN mailbox; I encourage you to ask your EDI representative.
The second component is the transformation layer. This is where the translation between EDI formats takes place. X12, UN/EDIFACT, GS1 XML trade messages, JSON, flat files, text files, or proprietary XML messages are transformed into a format that your ERP system can consume.
Lastly there’s the integration layer: the path into the enterprise system where the transformed message is consumed. It can be a connector (like ODBC or ODATA) or an API. The primary focus is a path for the order to take without manual intervention.
Yes! If belonging to a network is a strategic advantage, then access to multiple networks is even more of a strategic advantage. It’s actually not so much about the number of networks as it is about the availability of connections to your trading partner and choice of those connection methods. VANs typically involve monthly subscription costs and transaction fees (or kilo-character fees), whereas in most cases, methodologies like AS2, MFTP, FTP, SFTP, and APIs have no monthly costs directly associated with them.
Applicability Statement 2 (AS2) is a protocol used to transport data securely and reliably over the Internet. It provides document receipt and tracking without the need for a VAN or interconnect. In short, AS2 provides a direct connection with a trading partner.
AS2 makes use of the Internet as a payload-agnostic mechanism for delivery of EDI transaction documents, reducing potential points of failure. More importantly, it eliminates transaction-based charges that occur with the exchange of EDI transaction documents through a VAN connection.
Visionet’s PartnerLink solution is different. PartnerLink isn’t a VAN; it’s a highly scalable, reliable, and configurable EDI and B2B interchange solution that integrates natively with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. It also supports integration with most other ERP systems. PartnerLink includes an AS2 solution and connects to all of the major VANs, making it the perfect tool for B2B communication with both EDI and non-EDI trading partners.
PartnerLink also provides built-in support for API based eCommerce platforms like Shopify, Magento, and many others, allowing companies to shift seamlessly between EDI and API-based integrations. This makes PartnerLink a complete EDI, B2B, and API solution for frictionless partner communication.
PartnerLink enables communication with non-EDI organizations, too. It supports a wide range of EDI formats like X12, UN/EDIFACT, GS1 XML trade messages, non-EDI formats like XML and JSON, and custom formats to ensure reliable and secure communication with any trading partner organization.
“VANs provide competitive advantage” is only true when there’s no advantage found in access to multiple networks.