Our client, a distinguished beet sugar cooperative with a legacy dating back to the early 1900s, faced critical challenges during its business communications platform upgrade.
Get the inside scoop on how our client leveraged PartnerLinQ to:
Our client is a renowned German shoe manufacturer, known for its high-quality and comfortable footwear. With global headquarters and major facilities in Germany, the company sells its products in over 90 countries. However, the company faced challenges with its outdated infrastructure, including an AS400 system and legacy EDI systems, hindering its growth and efficiency. To address these issues, the company embarked on a digital transformation journey with PartnerLinQ, a cloud-based solution provider.
Discover how a leading convenience store chain & energy solutions provider, with a rich history dating back to 1926, achieved operational excellence and unprecedented scalability with PartnerLinQ’s advanced B2B & EDI capabilities. Balancing expansive retail operations with technological advancements, our client faced the challenge of streamlining third-party logistics and managing escalating operating costs.
Discover how we helped a luxury department store rapidly deploy an end-to-end digital solution during the COVID-19 outbreak. With a typical eCommerce implementation taking 5-8 months, the store needed a technology partner that could develop an online storefront in just a few months.
Learn how PartnerLinQ helped one of the world’s largest home retailers address challenges related to B2B API & EDI, including infrequent and unreliable updates, gaps in automation, and a lack of advanced reporting functionality. PartnerLinQ’s cloud-native multi-tenant platform delivers end-to-end visibility, flexibility, connectivity, and control, streamlining processes, automating workflows, and enhancing visibility for shippers, transportation & logistics providers, and thousands of carrier partners.
As a supply chain leader, you understand the challenges of navigating through disruptions while managing risk and maximizing rewards. Today, it’s more important than ever to stay ahead of the curve and explore the latest trends in the industry. This is where the Gartner Supply Chain Symposium/Xpo™ conference comes in.
This event is a must-attend for Chief Supply Chain Officers (CSCOs) and other supply chain leaders who are looking to predict disruptions, and even use them to their benefit. The world has changed economically, socially, and politically, elevating the importance of supply chains. With the power to leverage their credibility, confidence, and commitment, supply chain leaders can profitably deliver in times of unprecedented stress and volatility.
Let’s take a closer look at what you can expect from this event:
At the Gartner Supply Chain Symposium/Xpo™ conference, you’ll gain insights, strategies, and frameworks that will help you think big and drive real impact within your organization. PartnerLinQ, one of the key sponsors of the symposium, will be available at booth number 139 to have one-on-one interactions with supply chain and technology leaders and business users. They’ll cover the whole nine yards of supply chain transformation themes, including but not limited to:
The event isn’t just about gaining knowledge – it’s also about building relationships. Networking is an important part of any industry event, and the Gartner Supply Chain Symposium/Xpo™ conference is no exception. By engaging with PartnerLinQ’s technology, EDI, and supply chain experts, you’ll find opportunities to share your ideas and experiences. We’ll build new relationships, broaden perspectives, and uncover ways to solve problems alongside other supply chain leaders.
PartnerLinQ will also be moderating a roundtable session, moderated by Deepak Das, SVP Digital Transformation at PartnerLinQ, on May 9 at 3pm EST in room Europe 6. Additionally, you’ll hear from PartnerLinQ’s SVP, Head of SaaS Products and Platforms, Ahmed Raza, on the topic “Collaborative Planning for Supply chain Resilience” on May 8 at 6:05 PM EST on Stage 1. In this session, you’ll discover how collaborative planning can benefit businesses in today’s competitive environment.
Another exciting opportunity at the event is the chance to schedule a one-on-one meeting with PartnerLinQ’s experts. This is your chance to discuss your supply chain priorities and challenges, prioritize what to accelerate, unlock resources for digital investments, make meaningful cultural changes, and so much more. No matter where you are on your digital business acceleration journey, PartnerLinQ is here to help you get to your destination faster – with confidence.
The Gartner Supply Chain Symposium/Xpo™ conference is a must-attend event for any supply chain leader looking to stay ahead of the curve and drive real impact within their organization. By attending, you’ll gain actionable insights that will help you mitigate risks, respond to disruption, pursue digital initiatives, and prioritize technology investments to achieve your business goals. Don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity – register today!
ITO EN is a multinational beverage company that specializes in green tea and is the largest green tea distributor in Japan. Established in 1966, the company markets packaged and ready-to-drink tea products, focusing on the distribution and sales of its products.
North Bay Distribution has been a prominent name in the warehousing, order fulfillment, and shipping industry for more than 40 years. Over this time, North Bay has developed an in-house warehousing system that has been deployed across its warehouses in the US and Canada.
Rapid growth in North Bay’s business, its customers’ businesses, and its number of warehouses had made their existing solution difficult to manage. North Bay required an agile, scalable solution for rapid vendor onboarding, warehousing support, and support for their eCommerce system.
The Collected Group— a leading global designer, distributor, and retailer of contemporary, women’s apparel lifestyle brands, lacked a robust apparel inventory management system. PartnerLinQ enabled inventory visibility and enhanced partner collaborations, reducing the client’s operational inefficiencies and improving their ability to handle multiple sales channels.
The global supply chains are becoming more volatile than ever. Customer expectations are shifting, triggering modern technology adoption for many enterprises. Difficulties in onboarding trading partners further add to the struggle. What are the possible types of EDI solutions to address the matter of exchanging EDI transactions holistically, and do these various types of EDI solutions include other things, such as different types of EDI Transactions?
An effective Electronic Data Interchange Solution simplifies the exchange of electronic documents among partners through system and app integrations and cultivates collaboration via EDI and non-EDI exchange. As a result, the solution packages and delivers visibility, control, and optimization. In simple terms, it’s a feature-packed solution that enables intelligent decision-making in real-time. While these EDI technology solutions are critical to driving tangible business outcomes, particularly in recent years, the decision process is complex at the same time. This is why parties investigating Electronic Data Interchange Solutions must have a relatively deep understanding of the different types of EDI solutions before investing.
The best way to develop a sound understanding is to start right from the beginning. EDI solution providers are organizations that offer EDI software and services to companies looking for data exchange services, in short, a solution to assist with the transportation, transformation, and integration of trade. EDI systems, from this perspective, help you seamlessly exchange business documents between your partners by leveraging an EDI solution which could be on-premises or cloud-based. Some are provided as managed, while others are self-service. The solution ensures completeness, data validity, and security.
Before we proceed, it is critical to understand the types of EDI solution providers in the market so that you can identify the best electronic data interchange system.
There are five types of EDI solution providers offering one or more types of EDI solutions. In addition to services, they also differ in terms of industries and the business size they cater to. Take a look at these to identify which type will work best for your enterprise.
An EDI broker typically provides a comprehensive set of EDI solutions. They offer value-added network (VAN) connections and, at the same time, help companies connect to particular trading partners or networks. EDI brokers typically do not have their own network; instead, they serve in the capacity of an outsourced EDI staff, typically focusing on one or several industries. They provide everything from data entry to data translation services, ensuring that your EDI documents are transformed from your core systems to that of your partners while adhering to customer requirements and guidelines for various standards.
An EDI broker ensures that any company and startup, in particular, can easily share EDI documents with their partners without investing a great deal or compromising security. EDI brokers most often assist when a trading partner lacks EDI software of their own, and a few EDI brokers even support non-EDI formats. EDI brokers are typically engaged with the market where revenue is at the lower end of the industry spectrum and are ideal for small companies and startups. Eventually, these users reach a point where the brokered solution can no longer serve their needs. If your business involves complex integrations hybrid EDI scenarios, EDI brokers may fit your business. If your business is already involved with a brokered type of EDI solution and you are not getting the needed services, you may have outgrown your present solution.
Fully Managed service providers offer end-to-end EDI software and/or services just beyond the scope of an EDI broker. They may offer software or cloud-based services and help you translate EDI messages in multiple formats and transform and transfer your data. Their services may be an overreach for some as they are also involved in partner mapping, ERP integration, error handling, and resolutions.
If you are looking to outsource your entire EDI function and invest your resources in other tasks, this might be a suitable choice for you. If you want to invest in EDI, EDI talent, and do some things yourself, while these service providers may help you achieve your goals, they can also inhibit your growth. While fully managed services work well for many SMEs (Small to medium enterprises), some of the drawbacks of a fully managed service include limited control and visibility. This can lead to unexpected costs and challenges to upgrading to a new ERP, MRP, CRM, WMS, CMS, or TMS.
VAN providers have been around since the inception of EDI. VANs provide secure, outsourced networks that connect organizations with their trading partners across the globe. A value-added network (VAN) can help you securely send and share data with your partners and provide an outsourced network enabling seamless connections between global trading partners. Large enterprises can leverage this type of network to securely transmit documents from their EDI mailbox to a particular trading partner’s EDI mailbox through a service like a post office, but electronically. By enabling a secure network, they simplify communication between cloud-based EDI providers or internal networks using pre-connected connections with trading partners.
Some EDI VAN providers also offer supplemental services like data backup and recovery, document mapping, compliance, and performance tracking, and have grown largely through acquisition. If your partners are spread across the globe, and you lack needed network capabilities, a VAN service may be helpful to your business. However, VANs were initially developed for large companies and may be costly if your data exchange volume is high or may cause difficulties if your partner’s messaging format varies from yours. While VANs have long claimed to have a competitive advantage by way of their networks, the supply chain today is full of complexities, something that cannot possibly be resolved by way of a single network.
Breaking away from the traditional VAN providers are the AS2 Providers. EDI AS2 (Applicability Statement 2) providers allow for the secure transmission of various types of data, such as EDI and XML, over the internet using HTTP and TCP/IP. AS2 can also be used to transmit images and complete PDF documents, something a traditional VAN is unprepared to do. Among these variations today associated with conventional EDI, these AS2 services are widely used to ensure seamless integration with trading partners, allowing you to handle any file format.
AS2 providers are typically an addition to a VAN, managed service provider, or brokered EDI relationship. AS2 services require message disposition/delivery notifications that acknowledge the reception after the electronic message (document or data) transmits to the sender via AS2 protocol. One of the stated benefits of using AS2 over FTP is the message delivery notification or MDN. Although some may argue that the MDN replaces the Functional Acknowledgement (997), the message delivery notification (MDN) used in AS2 only indicates a message received. In contrast, the Functional Acknowledgement (997) also confirms the delivery of a document, any formatting errors, or data loss.
Enterprises can leverage MDNs using in-house IT resources or through a cloud-based vendor to determine if a partner is struggling to keep up with transaction volumes and adjust accordingly. If you are looking for an EDI solution that ensures an end-to-end process and helps you securely send unlimited data while being kind to your partners and easy on your pockets, AS2 has proven to be a worthwhile investment.
A complete EDI solution/provider is the type of EDI solution provider that develops, implements and maintains EDI software for your business and businesses like yours. This is the type of EDI solution capable of bringing to bear many or all of the solutions described above by catering to your core business and enabling seamless connectivity visibility, onboarding, and training. A type of EDI solution that provides an EDI platform, EDI solutions, connectivity and interoperability by delivering, for example, a VAN and an AS2 solution from within the core of the product or platform.
Enterprises employing such EDI tools can use their own EDI experts to manage day-to-day activities efficiently. Even activities such as error tracking, handling, and alerting can also be automated with a complete EDI solution. This EDI solution considers integration with one or more platforms or systems, once relegated to custom code as ‘out of the box’, in other words, included with the platform. This EDI solution provider also tends to keep their solutions up to date and improve upon them by regularly updating these platforms, their customers’ instances and keeping their users informed.
Complete EDI Solutions/Providers also include and deliver training to ensure that your EDI experts stay current with the latest technologies and can use them to deliver critical or time-sensitive transactions across your partners and networks efficiently and without errors. If you are looking for or are expecting to have or maintain complete control and visibility over your entire set of B2B, B2C messaging and/or your API/EDI practice, then a Complete EDI Solution/Provider might be a good fit for you.
PartnerLinQ is an innovative, cloud-native platform that delivers supply chain visibility and resilience by simplifying trading partner connectivity and interoperability. PartnerLinQ’s native app ecosystem adds business context to the traditional integration, minimizing disruption by increasing set-up velocity and improving implementation speed resulting in overall efficiency gains between 30 and 500%.
PartnerLinQ comes completely preconfigured and installed with capabilities for intelligent hyper-automation, multi-channel integration, and real-time analytics while allowing your team to take control if that’s what they want to do. It seamlessly connects multi-tier supply chain networks, channels, and marketplaces with your core ERP, MRP, CRM, WMS, CMS, or TMS, delivering unified connectivity to a global client base. PartnerLinQ connects with more than 77 Commerce Platforms, Market Places, B2B Portals, Social Channels, enterprise-level systems and shipping solutions today, so you are ready for today and the future.
PartnerLinQ simplifies the partner onboarding process through its Common Processing Workflow. Complemented by the Business Rule Manager, an entire migration process involving more than 1,000 partners and customers can be completed in weeks rather than months or years.
The PartnerLinQ platform scales automatically from transactions number in the hundreds to more than 60 million transactions. It is available in PartnerLinQ’s Azure-based hybrid cloud architecture and in the Google Cloud Platform, managing more than 8,000,000 transactions per day – nearly twice any required capacity.
It integrates seamlessly with your core ERP, MRP, CRM, WMS, CMS, TMS, or legacy systems, as well as Commerce Platforms, Market Places, B2B Portals, Social Channels, enterprise-level systems and shipping solutions to ensure that you are better positioned to drive even greater efficiencies with cooperative technologies, that provide real-time updates and actionable insights.
Real-time insights are critical for today’s supply chain executives, and PartnerLinQ delivers consistent customer value at every touchpoint. PartnerLinQ’s biggest success comes with its ability to turn falling service ratings into top scores with the biggest clients by providing greater visibility into the operations and the ability to consistently deliver on service-level commitments.
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