B2BEssentials-Tutorial-KJC-15Sep2008

Karen Cox

Description

B2B Learning CenterYour Source for B2B EducationB2B Processing Essentials TutorialSeven B2B Processing Essentials The 7 B2B Processing Essentials provides a simple guide for creating a successful B2B processing network. This tutorial includes an introduction to each B2B essential.1) Evaluate B2B processing opportunities 2) Define a phased B2B roadmap3) Collaborate with partners and stakeholders 4) Leverage B2B standards5) Select a flexible B2B solution6) Agree to B2B specifications7) Create a B2B processing networkB2B Processing Essentials ModelThese seven activities cover the most essential areas to manage so you can minimize the cost and time associated with implementing a business-to-business strategy. The model starts by evaluating your opportunities. It then flows to creating a phased roadmap. Collaboration is shown as a central theme... collaboration is an essential ongoing activity for successful B2B projects.Next, select B2B standards as the foundation for your actual process exchanges. The B2B solution should be ‘built upon’ the standards to maximize the return on your investments. Specifications will be created to support each new business process.Overtime, you will create a powerful B2B processing network that automates your business processes with each of your partners. Now, let’s look at each of the B2B Processing Essentials in more detail. The B2B Learning Center is hosted by www.KJCsolutions.com ...

Informations

• Publié par: Erdau
• Nombre de lectures: 22
• Langue: English

Extrait

Seven B2B Processing Essentials

The 7 B2B Processing Essentials provides a simple guide for creating a successful B2B

processing network. This tutorial includes an introduction to each B2B essential.

1)

Evaluate B2B processing

opportunities

2)

Define a phased B2B roadmap

3)

Collaborate with partners and

stakeholders

4)

Leverage B2B standards

5)

Select a flexible B2B solution

6)

Agree to B2B specifications

7)

Create a B2B processing network

B2B Processing Essentials Model

These seven activities cover the most essential areas to manage so you can minimize

the cost and time associated with implementing a business-to-business strategy.

The model starts by evaluating your

opportunities

. It then flows to creating a phased

roadmap

.

Collaboration is shown as a central theme...

collaboration

is an essential ongoing

activity for successful B2B projects.

Next, select

B2B standards

as the foundation for your actual process exchanges.

The

B2B solution

should be ‘built upon’ the standards to maximize the return on your

investments.

Specifications

will be created to support each new business process.

Overtime, you will create a powerful

B2B processing network

that automates your

business processes with each of your partners.

Now, let’s look at each of the B2B Processing Essentials in more detail.

B2BLearning Center

Your Source for B2B Education

B2B Processing Essentials Tutorial

The B2B Learning Center is hosted by www.KJCsolutions.com

1

Copyright 2007-2008, Karen Jean Cox. All Rights Reserved.

Evaluate B2B processing opportunities

B2B Essential #1

The goal for B2B essential #1 is to understand your total potential for process

integration. This evaluation will directly influence your B2B strategic plans and solution

investments.

Four Areas for B2B Opportunity Evaluation

1)

Business Partners

• What companies do you currently do business with on a regular basis?

• Consider your suppliers, manufacturers, shippers, service providers and

customers… all your outsourcing partners.

2)

B2B Processes

• Identify all the different information that is currently exchanged between you

and your business partners.

• For each process, identify both the written and verbal information.

3)

Information Methods

• Evaluate the methods or procedures used to create, send and receive

business information with business partners.

• Is the information sent to partners being created automatically by computer

systems or are documents/transactions created manually?

• How is information delivered to your business partner?

➡

Email (with attachments)

➡

Fax

➡

Telephone

➡

Electronic files using FTP

➡

EDI file transfers

➡

XML messaging

4)

Operational Costs

• Determine costs to manage the information exchanges, the cost of data entry,

as well as the costs to handle errors and changes to transactions.

Use these four areas to analyze your total scope of B2B processing opportunities.

Prioritize

the opportunities based on projected value. For example, strategy alignment,

value to your business operations, or value to your customers.

B2BLearning Center

Your Source for B2B Education

B2B Processing Essentials Tutorial

The B2B Learning Center is hosted by www.KJCsolutions.com

2

Copyright 2007-2008, Karen Jean Cox. All Rights Reserved.

Define a phased B2B roadmap

B2B Essential #2

B2B processing involves many companies and stakeholders. Using a simple, well-

structured B2B roadmap will improve the overall

efficiency

of your B2B projects and

clearly

communicate

the objectives for each phase.

B2B Phased Roadmap

1)

B2B Connection

• Select one B2B-experienced

company as your first B2B

partner.

• If the process allows, plan to

send and receive a business

document.

• Complete the initial effort to set

up and test the process and IT

integration.

2)

B2B Scenario

• Using the established connection from phase 1, add related processes and

information exchanges with your first business partner.

• Create a complete (end-to-end) process scenario for the partner role.

• The specific process you select will be based on your opportunity analysis.

3)

B2B Partners

• Reuse the process scenario from phase 2 with other similar business partners.

• Note: Each new partner must complete the initial B2B connection phase one time.

4)

B2B Processing

• Integrate new B2B process scenarios with existing partners.

• Focus on integrating one complete process scenario at a time.

5)

B2B Partner Roles

• Extend B2B processing to include new B2B partner roles.

• Integrate processes with each new partner role by repeating phases 1-4.

B2B roadmap will be focused on integrating

different business processes and partners.

B2BLearning Center

Your Source for B2B Education

B2B Processing Essentials Tutorial

The B2B Learning Center is hosted by www.KJCsolutions.com

3

Copyright 2007-2008, Karen Jean Cox. All Rights Reserved.

Collaborate with partners and stakeholders

B2B Essential #3

B2B processing requires cross-company coordination. B2B essential #3 is focused on

ensuring your business partners are actively involved in the B2B planning and provided

regular progress updates. This collaboration helps keep B2B projects on track.

Five B2B Collaboration Activities

Adding each new business partner to your B2B processing network will include a series

of collaboration activities. This effort is sometimes referred to as

partner on-boarding

.

1)

Secure commitment to B2B strategy

internally and with business partners.

Ensure your internal stakeholders and partners are prepared to make the time and

solution investments needed to automate B2B processes.

2)

Agree on B2B standards and specifications

to be used for the B2B processing.

Negotiation may be required to gain agreement on the vocabulary, technical and

process standards and detailed information requirements.

3)

Configure B2B solutions per project timeline

that has been agreed by internal

stakeholders and the business partner. Allow sufficient time for partner readiness.

4)

Test technical connection and process workflow

to verify the system-to-system

integration. This testing requires coordination of business and technical staff from

both companies and the solution providers.

5)

Measure B2B processing performance

to establish a positive collaboration

position with your partner... focus on the expected business results.

Seven Key B2B Measures

Collaborate with your partners to identify the relevant measures before integrating B2B

processes. These type of

benchmarks

... with demonstrated results will help improve

your partner relations. Performance measures provide a very clear value justification

for further B2B processing activities.

As a team, establish a

baseline

for the ‘pre-B2B’ environment and make it visible to the

stakeholders and project team.

Measure again

after the process automation has been

put in place.

•

Process Time

•

Data Accuracy

•

Staff Hours

•

Transaction Volume

•

Exception Rate

•

Transaction Changes

•

Process Failures

B2BLearning Center

Your Source for B2B Education

B2B Processing Essentials Tutorial

The B2B Learning Center is hosted by www.KJCsolutions.com

4

Copyright 2007-2008, Karen Jean Cox. All Rights Reserved.

Leverage B2B standards

B2B Essential #4

This may be one of the most important B2B essential... because using B2B standards

will enable you to lower your long-term costs for B2B process automation.

Using a Common Language Lowers Integration Costs!

Some companies start their first

process integration effort without any

regard to the standardization of the

content they exchange... only to find

that there is little opportunity to reuse

any of these unique process

documents with their next business

partner.

✦

B2B standards specify the

common

public process

and

B2B language

✦

B2B standards enable each

partner to compare (

map

) their own business information to a standard business

document and format

By using B2B standards, it is quite easy to extend standards-based processes to more

partners at a greatly reduced cost. The process-automation and data-mapping work will

already be in place for your own company and ready to be reused with the next

business partner.

By using B2B standards, the negotiation effort shifts

to gaining agreement on how to apply the standard...

not creating a new and unique set of documents for each partner.

Three B2B Standards Categories

1)

B2B Process Standards

specify how a business-process workflow and

collaboration is managed across two or more companies.

2)

B2B Vocabulary Standards

specify the information that is required for

each business transaction.

3)

B2B Technology Standards

define how to code, secure and exchange

information between companies.

B2BLearning Center

Your Source for B2B Education

B2B Processing Essentials Tutorial

The B2B Learning Center is hosted by www.KJCsolutions.com

5

Copyright 2007-2008, Karen Jean Cox. All Rights Reserved.

Select a flexible B2B solution

B2B Essential #5

The B2B solution is used to exchange information with business partners. There are

two general processing functions that handle the B2B processing.

B2B Gateway Functions

A B2B gateway is the software function

that automates the business-to-

business connectivity.

The B2B gateway software typically

runs on a server; however some B2B

solutions are designed for a PC. The

gateway acts as a bridge between the

business applications and the Internet

to support B2B processing.

✦

Sends and receives business documents.

✦

Translates business data between the internal or private format and the standard

or public format.

✦

Handles B2B message packaging, information security and digital certificates.

✦

Monitors the business-to-business process status for any required responses.

✦

Acknowledges that the business document has been received.

✦

Notifies users if there are any B2B failures.

Business Application Functions

✦

Creates the business documents sent between partners.

✦

Handles all the data processing and user interface.

✦

Determines how to handle the business response to B2B documents.

B2B Solutions

must coordinate the information exchanges between the B2B

gateway and the business applications. There are two general ways companies

implement B2B solutions.

✦

Direct Connection

with a company communicating directly with its partner.

✦

Processing Service

with both companies communicating through a third

company that offers a B2B connectivity or processing service.

B2BLearning Center

Your Source for B2B Education

B2B Processing Essentials Tutorial

The B2B Learning Center is hosted by www.KJCsolutions.com

6

Copyright 2007-2008, Karen Jean Cox. All Rights Reserved.

Agree to B2B specifications

B2B Essential #6

Implementing B2B requires that you and your partners jointly agree to the process,

vocabulary, and technical specifications. It is in this phase that the process workflow,

business decisions and exceptions must be clearly defined.

For each business document, create a

detailed specification defining the exact

type of business information to be

exchanged.

This is where the business

document standards are so helpful!

Public Process and Document

For each business document, partners

will specify the following information:

✦

Company and product identifiers

✦

Exact business information to be exchanged (terms and definitions)

✦

Required versus optional data

✦

Code lists and the business meaning of the status codes

✦

Procedures for handling data errors

✦

Technical format for the business document

Private Process and Document

After the public document is finalized, identify the internal data and format. In this step,

the private vocabulary is

mapped

to the public standard. To automate the B2B

processing, compare and link (map) each data element in the public document to the

internal vocabulary used by the business application.

Mapping files

are created using this data comparison.

The B2B gateway uses the mapping files to

automatically translate

the data in the

business documents between the public and private formats.

The actual business data does not change...

only the data labels and the technical

format are changed.

B2BLearning Center

Your Source for B2B Education

B2B Processing Essentials Tutorial

The B2B Learning Center is hosted by www.KJCsolutions.com

7

Copyright 2007-2008, Karen Jean Cox. All Rights Reserved.

B2B Gateway

Mapping

File A

Advance

Shipment

Notice

Advance

Shipment

Notice

Translate

Business

Data

Elements

Transform

Technical

Data

Format

ASN

1. Ship To

2. Bill To

3. Quantity

4. Item Number

5. Billing Amount

Ship Notice

1. Ship Address

2. Billing Address

3. Amount

4. Product ID

5. Payment Amount

Business

Application

Format

Standard

XML

Format

Create a B2B processing network

B2B Essential #7

After the initial B2B processing connections are complete, extend your existing B2B

investment to connect with other partners in your business community.

Over time, your B2B processing

network may include contract

manufacturers, suppliers, logistics

providers, direct buyers and

distributors.

Although the specific processes may

be different, the 5 B2B collaboration

activities will be the same for each

partner.

When creating a B2B processing network, establish a simple, repeatable

process for collaborating with new partners (on-boarding).

✦

B2B processing networks are created over multiple years of systematic partner

and process integration.

✦

Each integration can take several weeks and sometime months, depending on

your partners’ readiness and the process complexity.

✦

For each partner and process, follow a common set of collaboration and solution-

development steps. Refine this process as you gain experience.

✦

Extend B2B processing to partners in related processes to gain greater visibility

to multi-partner processes.

✦

Create a B2B processing network to integrate partner engagement for all

processes.

Follow the B2B Roadmap

Consider your business model and the B2B processing opportunities.

Clarify how your different business partners contribute to that model.

Build your B2B strategy and phased roadmap in a way that will automate every aspect

of your business-to-business processes.

B2BLearning Center

Your Source for B2B Education

B2B Processing Essentials Tutorial

The B2B Learning Center is hosted by www.KJCsolutions.com

8

Copyright 2007-2008, Karen Jean Cox. All Rights Reserved.