The GS1 eCom is the global standards for EDI that allow companies to automate their entire order-to-cash process through the accurate and efficient transmission of business data between partners. These will help drive cost and complexity out of the supply chain and enable faster and more accurate invoicing through EDI. 

“The accreditation status demonstrates that Wesupply has a high level of knowledge and understanding of GS1 UK’s eCom – EDI standards; a stamp of approval which many customers now look for,” said Jonathan Brown, Solution Partner Programme Manager, GS1 UK.

“GS1‘s standards continue to grow in importance amongst our customer base,” said David Grosvenor, Chief Executive, Wesupply. “Accreditation is key to Wesupply and demonstrates our understanding and commitment to the future of the standards.”

According to GS1 UK’s EDI cost savings report with Cranfield University, food and drink retailers and suppliers in the grocery sector already save £650 million a year through electronic transactions, however, a further £200 million a year in savings could be achieved through widespread adoption of the technology.

Wesupply understands the positive impact that secure, accurate and cost effective electronic trading has on performance and provides a fully managed, outsourced EDI service that connects businesses with full support of all the required standards and protocols.

Wesupply is also exhibiting today at the GS1 UK Annual Conference and Exhibition at Leicester City Football Club. At the event industry leaders including: Tesco, Diageo, Kraft Foods, NHS, Mars, PepsiCo UK and Sainsbury’s are presenting on key issues facing the retail, foodservice and healthcare sectors.

About Wesupply

Wesupply provides a fully managed and outsourced electronic business-to-business integration service, using a unique approach that maximises supply chain collaboration between independent organisations. This approach has consistently helped our customers secure tangible operational cost savings along with improved customer service, since the business was founded in 1999. Companies across all industries, including Retail, Building, CPG, Energy and Manufacturing rely on Wesupply to manage business-critical information flows for their extended supply chain processes.

Visit Wesupply’s website at www.wesupply.com

About GS1 UK

GS1 UK is a not for profit organisation, funded by its 24,000 members and part of the global GS1 Network. It has over 35 years of experience working with businesses across many sectors including retail, food service and healthcare. Its members range from small manufacturers to leading brands such as Unilever, Procter and Gamble, Kraft and Nestle and retailers such as Sainsbury’s, NHS, Tesco and Morrison’s. GS1 UK aims to make it faster, safer, cheaper and safer for its members to serve their customers through the development and deployment of open, global standards.

Visitors to the Wesupply stand will learn about EDI best practice and Wesupply’s fully managed EDI service. According to GS1 UK’s EDI cost savings report food and drink retailers and suppliers in the grocery sector already save £650 million a year through electronic transactions, however, a further £200 million a year in savings could be achieved through widespread adoption of the technology. Wesupply understands the positive impact that secure, accurate and cost effective electronic trading has on performance. Wesupply provides a fully managed, outsourced EDI service that connects businesses with full support of all the required standards and protocols.

The event will see industry leaders, including Diageo, Kraft Foods, NHS, Mars, PepsiCo UK and Sainsbury’s present on key issues facing the retail, foodservice and healthcare sectors. Attendees will hear about these leading companies’ latest supply chain developments and challenges and how GS1 UK solutions and standards are supporting their business objectives.

The event will also provide attendees with the opportunity to meet experts from GS1 UK as well many leading accredited GS1 UK Solution Partners including Wesupply.

Further details for the event can be found here.

About Wesupply

Wesupply provides a fully managed and outsourced electronic business-to-business integration service, using a unique approach that maximises supply chain collaboration between independent organisations. This approach has consistently helped our customers secure tangible operational cost savings along with improved customer service, since the business was founded in 1999. Companies across all industries, including Retail, CPG, Energy and Manufacturing rely on Wesupply to manage business-critical information flows for their extended supply chain processes.

About GS1 UK

GS1 UK is a not for profit organisation, funded by its 24,000 members and part of the global GS1 Network. It has over 35 years of experience working with businesses across many sectors including retail, food service and healthcare. Its members range from small manufacturers to leading brands such as Unilever, Procter and Gamble, Kraft and Nestle and retailers such as Sainsbury’s, NHS, Tesco and Morrison’s. GS1 UK aims to make it faster, safer, cheaper and safer for its members to serve their customers through the development and deployment of open, global standards.

COVENTRY 26^th March 2012: The UK’s leading fresh produce companies are turning to OneTime®, Wesupply’s fully managed EDI service, to help them meet UK food retailers’ and supermarkets’ growing electronic trading stipulations.

Berry Gardens, Vitacress and Produce World amongst others have switched from complex and expensive on premise EDI systems to OneTime in the last 15 months. Hundreds of daily orders and stringent information requirements mandated by supermarkets have led to a rethink amongst soft fruit co-ops and salad growers on how they manage and transfer critical order information.

Large supermarkets and food retailers require fresh produce suppliers to provide guaranteed and accurate data about orders, invoices and shipments. The cost and complexity of using traditional on-premise EDI systems to handle these growing data requirements make electronic trading unnecessarily expensive and difficult for many suppliers.

As a fully managed service, those outsourcing to Wesupply^TM are free from the burden and risks associated with technical issues, maintenance costs and the need to keep abreast of advancing technology. OneTime enables suppliers and their customers to share a common view of the full purchase order to invoice lifecycle. Through increased visibility it helps to improve product availability, invoice-matching rates and reduce excess inventory to improve supply chain performance and flexibility.

Berry Gardens, a soft fruit supply cooperative of circa 60 UK growers supplying major supermarkets, has just made the switch to Wesupply. The company needed to improve management of supermarkets’ requirements for Advanced Shipping Notices (ASNs) giving detailed information about shipment timings and the contents of hundreds of pallets each day. Wesupply replaced Berry Gardens’ old EDI system which was expensive and not able to cope with the changes that its customers demanded.

“EDI is completely critical to Berry Gardens’ success and the ramifications of information not being provided to or received from customers with speed and accuracy would be threatening to our business.” said James Judge, Head of IT, Berry Gardens. “By using Wesupply’s platform which is built to the highest industry standards we know that transactions are always on time, secure and compliant. We have also saved money on the cost of managing orders and transactions.”

When EDI fails, orders, shipments and payments get delayed and at worst rejected impacting supplier profitability and cash flow. In pursuit of greater financial control and efficiency large supermarkets require their suppliers to provide more accurate and timely information about the processing of orders which unless managed effectively can increase suppliers’ costs.

Leading European washed and ready to eat salad company Vitacress Group has consolidated electronic trading onto the OneTime platform, providing a common and intelligent interface between the group’s customers and different ERP systems.

Produce World had outgrown its existing EDI capabilities and wished to consolidate electronic trading across most of the companies within the group – Produce World Solanum Ltd, Produce World IFP Ltd, Produce World RBO Ltd, Produce World Rustler Ltd and Produce World Marshalls Ltd. By moving all electronic trading to the Wesupply platform it has reduced overheads for local support and achieved a lower total cost of ownership.

There are other examples of fresh produce suppliers who have moved to the Wesupply platform, including a leading supplier of vegetables and salads to UK supermarkets, who has consolidated EDI onto OneTime to reduce overheads. Its previous EDI solution proved costly and inflexible with a very slow process for on-boarding new customers. It is to use OneTime for the real-time exchange of critical business documents with eight customers including Sainsbury’s, Budgens, Morrisons and Iceland.

Another fresh produce customer, which imports and supplies fresh fruit for retail, has moved to Wesupply for an EDI service that enables them to trade with four major supermarket chains, while also providing supply chain services for a number of other suppliers. Its incumbent EDI provider could not distinguish between orders from these individual suppliers and the company’s direct orders. Taking an outsourced approach has minimised the need for internal knowledge and increased flexibility to meet changing market demands.

“Fresh produce is one of the fastest moving and most demanding food supply environments and suppliers are under constant pressure to ensure their product is processed, supplied and paid for within hours,” said Andy Watts, Sales Director at Wesupply. “While EDI is not a new requirement for these businesses it is evolving rapidly with increasing pressure to provide additional information to customers, making it increasingly business critical.”

Watts continued, “Fresh produce providers can gain real advantage by removing their EDI headaches and passing them to Wesupply, who offer a more sophisticated and superior infrastructure, application and service than many clients could provide themselves. With Wesupply trade is simplified and the pain and complexities of EDI are removed”.

About Wesupply

Wesupply provides a fully managed and outsourced electronic business-to-business integration service, using a unique approach that maximises supply chain collaboration between independent organisations. This approach has consistently helped our customers secure tangible operational cost savings along with improved customer service, since the business was founded in 1999. Companies across all industries, including Retail, CPG, Energy and Manufacturing rely on Wesupply to manage business-critical information flows for their extended supply chain processes.

“We were looking for an outsourced solution to remove the internal requirement for hardware, software and EDI expertise/support” says James Bowes, Managing Director at JLB Wholesale. “Speed of deployment was absolutely critical as we had a customer deadline that we simply had to meet.”

“Complying with customer s’ EDI mandates can be a challenge for companies both large and small. I am delighted that we were able to assist JLB Wholesale in meeting their customers’ requirements” says Ben Holmes, Sales Executive at Wesupply.  “The OneTime solution is fully scalable and will therefore provide JLB Wholesale with the flexibility to meet new customers’ EDI requirements moving forward”.

JLB Wholesale join an ever growing and diverse list of CPG suppliers who are using Wesupply to trade electronically with their customers, including Daler-Rowney, Produce World and Capespan. Leading retailers including Sainsbury’s, Screwfix and Poundland, also effectively manage their supply chains using Wesupply’s intelligent EDI solution to trade with their suppliers.

About Wesupply

Wesupply provides a fully managed and outsourced electronic business-to-business integration service, using a unique approach that maximises supply chain collaboration between independent organisations. This approach has consistently helped our customers secure tangible operational cost savings along with improved customer service, since the business was founded in 1999. Companies across all industries, including Retail, CPG, Energy and Manufacturing rely on Wesupply to manage business-critical information flows for their extended supply chain processes.

About JLB Wholesale

JLB Wholesale was established in 2004 with a concept to supply independent retailers and wholesalers across the UK with discounted products in the confectionery and soft drink sector. Since then the company has evolved and diversified into additional sectors such as toiletries, houseware’s, pet food, stationery and groceries.

Visit JLB Wholesale’s website at www.jlbwholesale.co.uk

Babco will utilize Wesupply’s OneTime solution for the real-time exchange of orders and invoices with its customers.

“A key factor in choosing Wesupply as our EDI provider was the company’s ability to undertake the full on-boarding of our customer base – both now and in the future” said Tony Ould, Finance and Logistics Director at Babco UK Ltd. “It was also important that the solution could be integrated with our SAGE Line 50 ERP system”.

“Babco has a clear understanding of the benefits that can be achieved from centralizing and outsourcing their electronic trading to a SaaS provider” says Ben Holmes, Sales Executive at Wesupply. “We look forward to reducing Babco’s day-to-day involvement in EDI, enabling the company to free up internal resources and streamline their trading processes”.

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EDI is not a new concept for Babco, in fact the company has been utilising numerous web browser interfaces to trade with five of the company’s key customers –leading UK grocery retailers. However, the company wanted to reduce the workload of their staff by consolidating all of their electronic trading on to one platform, which could be integrated with their back office system and third party warehouse.

Babco will utilise Wesupply’s OneTime solution for the real-time exchange of orders and invoices with its customers.

Tony Ould, Finance and Logistics Director at Babco UK Ltd, says, “A key factor in choosing Wesupply as our EDI provider was the company’s ability to undertake the full on-boarding of our customer base – both now and in the future. It was also important that the solution could be integrated with our SAGE Line 50 ERP system”.

Ben Holmes, Sales Executive at Wesuppl, adds, “Babco has a clear understanding of the benefits that can be achieved from centralising and outsourcing their electronic trading to a SaaS provider. We look forward to reducing Babco’s day-to-day involvement in EDI, enabling the company to free up internal resources and streamline their trading processes”.

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EDI is not a new concept for Babco, in fact the company has been utilising numerous web browser interfaces to trade with five of the company’s key customers – leading UK grocery retailers. However, the company wanted to reduce the workload of their staff by consolidating all of their electronic trading on to one platform which could be integrated with their back office system and third party warehouse.

Babco will utilise Wesupply’s OneTime solution for the real-time exchange of orders and invoices with its customers.

“A key factor in choosing Wesupply as our EDI provider was the company’s ability to undertake the full on-boarding of our customer base – both now and in the future” said Tony Ould, Finance and Logistics Director at Babco UK Ltd. “It was also important that the solution could be integrated with our SAGE Line 50 ERP system”.

“Babco has a clear understanding of the benefits that can be achieved from centralising and outsourcing their electronic trading to a SaaS provider” says Ben Holmes, Sales Executive at Wesupply. “We look forward to reducing Babco’s day-to-day involvement in EDI, enabling the company to free up internal resources and streamline their trading processes”.

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EDI is not a new concept for Babco, in fact the company has been utilising numerous web browser interfaces to trade with five of the company’s key customers –leading UK grocery retailers. However, the company wanted to reduce the workload of their staff by consolidating all of their electronic trading on to one platform, which could be integrated with their back office system and third party warehouse.

Babco will utilise Wesupply’s OneTime solution for the real-time exchange of orders and invoices with its customers.

“A key factor in choosing Wesupply as our EDI provider was the company’s ability to undertake the full on-boarding of our customer base – both now and in the future” said Tony Ould, Finance and Logistics Director at Babco UK Ltd. “It was also important that the solution could be integrated with our SAGE Line 50 ERP system”.

“Babco has a clear understanding of the benefits that can be achieved from centralising and outsourcing their electronic trading to a SaaS provider” says Ben Holmes, Sales Executive at Wesupply. “We look forward to reducing Babco’s day-to-day involvement in EDI, enabling the company to free up internal resources and streamline their trading processes”.

About Wesupply

Wesupply provides a fully managed and outsourced electronic business-to-business integration service, using a unique approach that maximises supply chain collaboration between independent organisations. This approach has consistently helped our customers secure tangible operational cost savings along with improved customer service, since the business was founded in 1999. Companies across all industries, including Retail, CPG, Energy and Manufacturing rely on Wesupply to manage business-critical information flows for their extended supply chain processes.

About Babco UK Ltd.

Babco (UK) Ltd was set up in October 1999 and began importing various beers and ciders as well as spirits to sell into the UK market.  Since then Babco (UK) Ltd has been involved in importing Savanna Cider from South Africa.

Babco have also, more recently set up a specialised distribution company called the Mainsail Trading Company. Through Mainsail a number of brands have been designed and created ready for market and are stocked by Tesco, The Co-operative and Makro stores nationwide.

Babco (UK) Ltd is based in Gravesend, Kent, and with many years experience in the industry is always looking at new trends and opportunities.

Faced with the challenge of providing extensive power infrastructure, electricity distributor UK Power Networks wanted to improve its on-time, in-full performance to its customers – the company’s 3500 field engineers and project managers – in order to ensure that it hits its set targets. To achieve this critical objective, in early 2008 the company embarked on ‘The Inventory Visibility Project’, an initiative designed to transform its supply chain, in part, by replacing a costly manual ordering processes with a streamlined B2B solution that provides full visibility into the order cycle.

SaaS

UK Power Networks decided to go the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) route and selected Wesupply, with its managed intelligent B2B platform, to automate the ordering process and to provide visibility into its key supplier community. The new system has resulted in lower costs and improved confidence in the ordering process, which in time will reduce the need to hold safety stock. Importantly Wesupply is now in the process of implementing a Dashboard of supplier KPIs that will enable UK Power Networks to monitor supplier performance, driving improvements in the on-time, in-full performance of suppliers. In turn this will help UK Power Networks to significantly upgrade its own on-time, in-full ratings to its customers.

UK Power Networks is a leading electricity distribution company that owns and operates the network of underground cables and overhead lines that distribute electricity in London, the East of England and the South East. The company’s networks are vast. Laid out, they would stretch several times around the circumference of the Earth.

The company undertakes the infrastructure build and maintenance work between the pylons of the National Grid and the domestic or commercial end-user. A fast and efficient supply of materials to its service engineers is critical to maintaining high service levels to its customers.

With an annual spend within Logistics of approximately £100 million, UK Power Networks initially wanted to simply streamline the communication of purchase orders to suppliers by moving away from laborious manual processes to an electronic means of communication, creating a more robust mechanism. This could have been achieved through a traditional on-premise software approach. But this was not to be the case.

Nigel Rouse, head of logistics at UK Power Networks, recognised the opportunities that could be gained by using an intelligent ondemand business process platform provided as an outsourced service. Having worked previously in the automotive manufacturing sector, he was aware of Wesupply’s offering in this space and understood the benefits and the speed of delivery of results Wesupply’s OneTime solution provided: “What we were looking for was a web-based supply chain approach, an invoice matching and communications solution that could manage the life-cycle of an order right through to payment,” Nigel says.

The solution

It was important to UK Power Networks that Wesupply’s OneTime solution interfaced successfully with their main SAP system in order that the whole sales-cycle and procurement-cycle is integrated – “So it all sits within an available-to-promise context in SAP,” states Nigel. “The more information you’ve got, the firmer you can be about planning when a customer is going to get their goods.” As with any systems integration work Nigel admits that there have been some challenges. “The advantage of Wesupply is that it’s a flexible solution and a low-cost process relative to the configuration complexities of a mainframe system.” In terms of timing: “It went reasonably smoothly, right on time and to the agreed plan.”

The scope of ‘The Inventory Visibility Project’ was to automate the purchase order management process for the top 35 of the company’s material suppliers, representing about 80 per cent of transactions by value and activity. Further suppliers may be brought into the system as the supply base changes.

The process managed by Wesupply involves: A purchase order raised by UK Power Networks is sent by the system to a supplier. The supplier will then send back an acknowledgement with notification of the exact quantity to be sent and the scheduled date of delivery. Prior to goods being dispatched by a supplier an Advanced Shipment Notice (ASN) is sent to UK Power Networks. When the goods are received at UK Power Networks they are checked against the ASN to ensure that everything that was shipped was what was received and a goods receipt note is generated by the system and sent to the supplier. Finally, the supplier can create and send an invoice online via Wesupply using the data used from the ASN, which with one click of a button turns the information from the ASN into an invoice. By using the online invoice system the supplier finds it easier and faster to be approved by UK Power Networks’ financial system.

Intelligent benefits

As Wesupply’s web-based platform is designed and built to understand the messages that it moves – rather than being purely a message delivery system – it can apply intelligence to the task. The system is designed to be proactive and fully collaborative, helping both parties achieve the best results by sending alerts to suppliers to remind them that goods need to be dispatched or perhaps notifying UK Power Networks’ inventory planners if a supplier’s ASN indicates a shortfall in supply. The system’s ability to interpret and check ASNs to orders and verify delivery and invoicing creates an integrated managed process for purchase orders right through to payment.

In addition to generating alerts and checking for mismatches in data, the set of Dashboards and supplier KPIs that are being installed by Wesupply for UK Power Networks will offer an insight into each supplier’s performance, a facility that will serve to enhance supplier performance in terms of on-time, in-full deliveries. Improvements in this area will help UK Power Networks to offer a better service to its field service engineers, and as a consequence will contribute to the company achieving its own stringent delivery targets.

“Subscribing to the Wesupply service has enabled us to collaborate closely with our suppliers. Not only does this help our suppliers to manage cost based on accurate and timely orders, but it also helps us to provide an even better service to our customers,” says Nigel. “By improving order quality and visibility we benefit and so do our suppliers.”

Wesupply provides a fully managed electronic business-to-business integration service that maximises supply chain collaboration between independent organisations. This approach has its customers secure tangible operational cost savings along with improved customer service, since the business was founded in 1999.

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A shift is underway within the grocery sector relating to the way transactional information is exchanged between retailers and suppliers. This is a change that will significantly impact the way suppliers do business with the big supermarket chains.

With such large numbers of transactions it is hardly surprising that grocery retail chains were early adopters of EDI technology, having used in-house systems supported by value added networks (VANs) to electronically exchange orders and invoices with key suppliers for the past 30 years. According to the ‘EDI Cost Savings Report’ published in September 2010 by the global standards organisation, GS1 UK, in conjunction with Cranfield School of Management, some 27 million orders are made in the UK grocery sector every year, with 84 per cent of orders by retailers and 87 per cent of invoices from suppliers transacted using electronic data interchange (EDI) technology. The report into the UK’s top 15 grocery retailers – covering 90 per cent of the sector – finds that the industry saves £650 million per year in costs by using EDI instead of manual, paper-based processes for its orders, invoices and despatch advices.

Although EDI is well established in the Grocery sector, GS1 UK’s report highlights that at present only 38 per cent of the orders made by UK grocery retailers use despatch advices, a situation which presents an opportunity for the sector to save a further £200 million a year through full EDI implementation. An increasing number of retailers seem to be recognising this opportunity and are now pushing for even greater supply chain efficiencies by demanding more information from suppliers, such as despatch notes/ Advanced Shipment Notifications (ASNs) and a more frequent exchange of this information.

Next generation EDI facilitates collaboration

EDI technology has come a long way in the last 30 years and the large grocery chains are acutely aware of the increased visibility, operational agility and strategic advantage that come with the ‘next generation’ of EDI solutions. However, its potential can only be fully realised if suppliers too, share in the use of this ‘intelligent’ B2B technology to drive collaborative gains for both parties.

At this present time, several of the large supermarket chains are looking to move their electronic trading capabilities to outsourced service providers on a fully managed basis. Sainsbury’s are in the process of transferring 4000 of its suppliers onto a single B2B platform operated by Wesupply to significantly improve visibility into critical supply chain processes. The platform enables integration with supplier back-office systems, provides checking and validation of content against business rules of all messages exchanged between Sainsbury’s and suppliers and will generate alerts in the event of errors or delays. This additional visibility benefits both Sainsbury’s and its suppliers by streamlining the exchange of orders, shipping information and invoices in support of the delivery of product from supplier to distribution centre or store.

Other retailers in the sector are known to be evaluating an outsourced, fully managed approach to EDI. Given the scale of this sweeping change within the industry, it is highly likely that the majority of suppliers to the grocery sector will be mandated to

comply with the varying and expanding electronic trading requirements of the major supermarkets. This will place considerable pressure on those traditional suppliers with in-house EDI systems and IT support, to keep up.

The challenge of complexity

Most of the traditional and long standing suppliers to the grocery chains are fully aware of the considerable benefits of using EDI. However, many manage the process in-house and are subsequently faced with a range of complexities, from selecting across the plethora of EDI VANs or web-based portals available, to the multiplicity of data formats that are commonly used – standards such as Tradacoms, EDIFACT, EANCOM, XML, along with all the proprietary formats.

Adding to the complexity, these formats vary by customer and change occurs with increasing regularity. Even if a given customer uses a well-established standard, such as Tradacoms or EANCOM, these may well be interpreted or implemented in slightly different ways. Further to this the rate at which VANs are acquired/retired, connectivity preferences changed, new document types introduced (ASNs, PODs), and even minor tweaks made to documents, such as adding a new mandatory field, all present challenges on an ongoing basis that makes maintaining links with customers a hardship. Then of course there are the costs of equipment, software, IT support and maintenance to consider – along with the costs of using a VAN.

Managing capabilities and costs

Responding to the new trading mandates of grocery retailers and managing all of this variety and change can be expensive and time-consuming for suppliers, creating work for the IT function that can hardly be described as value-added activity. However, this need not be the case, and indeed, could be seen as an opportunity for suppliers to adopt this next generation of ‘intelligent’ B2B technology themselves.

Outsourcing to a B2B service provider overcomes the technical constraints to extending EDI capability across the whole customer portfolio and off-loads the responsibility for compliance to the service provider.

However challenging the task of compliance and increasing customer demands is for suppliers with experience of EDI, for suppliers unfamiliar with EDI the prospect is far more daunting. With the fast expansion of supermarket product portfolios into non-food items there are a large number of suppliers that do not yet use EDI and are therefore not aware of EDI’s vast array of advantages. According to the GS1 UK report, 81 per cent of companies are still using manual, paper-based processes.

Many such suppliers will fear that the complexity of grappling with the various protocols and technologies used by their key customers may present large costs, particularly in fulfilling the differing needs of each retailer. These, often small, suppliers have never used EDI technology and have relied on the often labour intensive and error prone process of faxing documents to customers and re-keying orders into their ERP systems, something that is becoming increasingly complicated and expensive.

The advantages to outsourcing EDI

Suppliers, large or small, regardless of their technological capabilities, are not only able to easily comply with their customers’ electronic trading requirements, but are now in a position to take full advantage of ‘intelligent’ web based B2B trading technology to accrue all the benefits that come with supply chain visibility. Suppliers can now trade seamlessly with their customers and therefore speed up the order-tocash cycle, through an outsourced, fully managed solution delivered on a Software as a Service (SaaS) basis.

In the case of Wesupply’s OneTime EDI solution, to be compliant suppliersneed only to make a single connection to the Wesupply network. This may be a direct link into the supplier’s ERP system or, with smaller suppliers, a simple web browser interface.

To take full advantage of this new ‘intelligent’ B2B technology a supplier can develop its own electronic trading hub through which it can trade with all its customers, irrespective of the numerous protocols and technologies used across the industry. The ‘intelligence’ of the technology within the hub attunes the format of each message carried to the individual systems requirement of each customer. Suppliers who have their own hub are in full control of their supply chain as they set the rules by which electronic trading takes place, so that predefined fields can be set to ensure that requirements, such as minimum order quantities, prices and delivery times are as contracted. An ‘alert’ can be sent if any parameter is outside of compliance, which helps rectify any problems quickly and prevents shortfalls in supply that may lead to customer disappointment. Importantly, automated invoicing and validation against orders speeds up payment.

Establishing links

Wesupply has been working within the retail sector for a significant number of years, establishing hubs for some of the largest and most recognisable retailers and suppliers such as: Sainsbury’s, Fine Lady Bakeries, Diageo, Vitacress, Capespan, Lyons Seafood, G & J Greenall, Radnor Hills Mineral Water, and Grohe. Over four thousand companies will soon join Wesupply’s grocery sector community, as part of the Sainsbury’s replatforming project. The addition of such a large number of suppliers will establish links that help speed the time it takes to onboard trading partners and bring a new hub on-stream.

Suppliers to the grocery retail sector have the opportunity to use B2B EDI technology to their advantage, bringing IT and administrative costs down and pushing supply chain performance up across all their customers. Grocery retailers have recognised the benefits of outsourcing their EDI capabilities, perhaps their suppliers should be thinking along the same lines.

David Grosvenor is chief executive of Wesupply. Wesupply provides a fully managed and outsourced electronic business-to-business integration service, using a unique approach that maximises supply chain collaboration between independent organisations. This approach has consistently helped its customers secure tangible operational cost savings along with improved customer service, since the business was founded in 1999.

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