ERP Migration and New B2B Connectivity Requirements
Posted by Mike Canniff on August 23, 2011
In this blog series, I’ve been discussing issues related to “Adopting Leading Edge Integration During Your ERP Migration”. In this post, I want to drill down into the B2B connectivity requirements for cloud based ERP solutions.
Automating eBusiness related business processes such as Procure-to-Pay or Order-to-Cash may be one of the reasons to implement a new cloud based ERP solution. So understanding connectivity options will better position you for success during the implementation project. B2B connectivity can mean a lot of things, but I want to focus my analysis on three main critical areas :
- Direct customer/supplier communication: As your business grows (one of the reasons for adopting cloud based ERP), larger customers and vendors may request that you transmit data directly to their eCommerce portals. This point to point integration will typically be in some XML data format. This could be in a standards based format such as XML OAGIS or Punchout. But there may also be a requirement to adopt some on premise data format such as SAP’s XML Business Connector, Oracle’s Fusion middleware XML formats, or Microsoft’s Dynamics eConnect product. In this case, the cloud based ERP XML / Web Services data formats will need to be transformed to match the customer’s data formats. This can be a relatively complex undertaking. So make sure to estimate enough time in the overall ERP implementation schedule to support these new customer integration requirements. Ideally, look for a B2B solution provider with good experience across a wide range of on-premise and cloud ERP systems.
- B2B Marketplaces: Another key requirement for “moving up the ERP stack” will be to connect to industry based marketplaces. Your customers may already be participating in these marketplaces. So reaching out to these marketplaces will be key to your company’s business growth strategy. Marketplace examples include the Ariba Network, SciQuest Procurement Community (Higher Education, Research, and Healthcare), Visa Financial Community, or vertical networks, such as the Automotive Industry. Most ERP solutions do not have direct connectivity to these marketplaces. So if marketplace involvement is a strategic requirement, then make sure your B2B provider can support the target systems.
- EDI Hubs or B2B Brokers: With a desktop based ERP package, an enterprise typically would export a file (say POs) to be “deposited” at the EDI Broker’s FTP or web site. This would be processed in batch mode with error logs being email back to the IT department. “Clean” data would be published through the broker and delivered to the company’s vendors. Assuming that you are adopting a leading cloud based ERP solution, verify that they have pre-built integrations with your EDI hub. This will provide more “out of the box” connectivity between ERP and EDI environments. This should result in more transaction oriented and better error handling. Or even better, see your move to a cloud-based ERP as an opportunity to go beyond EDI-based transactions and move to a more agile cloud-based B2B integration environment or broker, where EDI may be one part of the integration but the cloud integration platform can broker all formats and systems via one connection from your ERP system.
So you first need to identify which of the three general areas above will be most important to your business. Then ensure that the B2B solution provider can provide the end to end connectivity with your cloud based ERP system. The better the match, i.e. pre-built integration support or vast interoperability across all of these systems, the lower the cost of implementation. And this leads to my last post in this series, which will deal with some of the ROI benefits in upgrading integration technology along with ERP implementation.
Tags: B2B Integration, Cloud ERP, EDI Connectivity, supplier networks
New primary research from Gatepoint Research released today shows big upheaval in the application, data, SaaS and Cloud integration space. Critical analysis on ebizQ at http://www.ebizq.net/blogs/integrationedge/2011/08/application-integration-upheaval.php
Comment by Hollis Tibbetts — August 23, 2011 @ 2:27 pm