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"Inovis is a leading provider of on-demand Business Community Management solutions that empower companies to transact, collaborate and optimize communications with
every facet of their business communities. By standardizing and automating mission-critical business interactions, companies can dramatically reduce the complexity and cost of supply chain communication."
Source: Inovis
Migration Made Easy: Switching VAN Providers without the Fire Drills
EDI Solutions is also known as :
EDI Solutions,
Secure EDI Solutions,
Electronic Data Interchange EDI,
Supply Chain Management EDI ,
Supply Chain Visibility,
EDI Data Interchange,
Supply Chain Operations EDI Solutions,
EDI Service Solution Integration ,
Selecting Migration Partner EDI Solutions,
Supply-Chain Operations Reference EDI Solutions,
Scm Operations Research EDI Solutions,
EDI Web Solutions,
EDI Network Connections,
EDI Managed Services VAN,
Value-Added Network VAN,
EDI Services VAN,
Value-Added Network System,
Value Added Network EDI,
EDI Value Added Network Information,
EDI Network Connections,
Reducing VAN Costs.
Introduction
The challenges presented by multiple Value-Added Networks (VANs) and managing
diverse trading partners create barriers to the efficiencies promised by EDI. Multiple
providers mean multiple points of failure with no one entity to hold accountable.
Also, as trading communities grow, end-to-end supply chain visibility becomes an
essential operational requirement. These concerns can be addressed through migration to
Inovisworks™. The Inovisworks VAN delivers the technology to meet multiple trading
partner requirements and achieve complete supply chain visibility, which dramatically
impacts your ability to effectively communicate across your entire trading community.
This white paper is designed to outline the current challenges created by working with
multiple VANs, highlight the new capabilities delivered by the next generation of EDI
technology, discuss the factors involved in migrating to a single VAN solution and present
the financial and operational improvements migration can deliver for your business.
The topics included in this whitepaper are:
- The Challenges of Working with Multiple VANs
- Key Capabilities Delivered by Next-Generation EDI Solutions
- Key Factors When Selecting a Migration Partner
- Inovisworks: Next-Generation Performance
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- The Challenges of Working with Multiple VANs
- Key Capabilities Delivered by Next-Generation EDI Solutions
- Factors to Consider When Selecting a Migration Partner
- Best Practices Checklist for a Seamless VAN Migration
- Inovisworks: Next-Generation Performance
- About Inovis
The Challenges of Working with Multiple VANs
For various business reasons, many companies have found themselves using multiple Value-
Added Networks (VANs) to manage their supply chain operations. They may have one VAN
for their supplier community, another system for their customers and yet another VAN that
resulted from trading partner mandates. As EDI technology has progressed and trading
partner expectations have increased, using multiple VANs creates a multitude of business
challenges that place significant drag on supply chain efficiency.
Lack of end-to-end supply chain visibility
Multiple VANs create multiple layers of
communication that don't provide a single point of
visibility across your supply chain operations.
Disparate systems can't deliver comprehensive
tools to manage a transaction from start to finish in
real time. Without end-to-end visibility, your
business loses the advantage of being proactive
when exceptions occur, which in turn negatively
impacts trading partner relationships and increases
basic operating costs.
The lack of complete visibility means you cannot
communicate within your trading community with
the speed and granular level of reporting data that
have become the standard in today's business
environment.
Increased cost of ownership
Supporting multiple VANs diverts time and financial resources away from operations
because you must stay abreast of multiple standards, troubleshoot with different providers
and maintain each system as a separate entity. Basic costs like maintenance contracts,
support calls and licensing fees begin to add up when multiple systems are involved. Not to
mention the fixed overhead costs of dealing each third-party VAN provider'even if the
majority of your traffic is going through only one of your VANs. However, the greatest cost
of ownership presented by multiple systems is the opportunity cost of missing out on the
savings delivered by the increased efficiencies and new capabilities in next-generation EDI
technologies.
To address these challenges and meet the expectations of their trading partner
communities, many companies are migrating to a next-generation EDI solution that
consolidates multiple Value-Added Networks into one network.
Key Capabilities Delivered by a Next-Generation VAN
The performance of your trading community is an essential link to your own overall
performance. However, successfully managing each part of the supply chain continuum can
eat away at your time and take your focus off of new business initiatives.
The next generation of EDI solutions delivers simplified access to key information and new
tools that help you maximize that information to more efficiently manage your entire supply
chain operations'from initial suppliers through to the end customer. The latest technology
offers you new capabilities that will transform the way you manage your supply chain and
communicate within your trading partner community.
Comprehensive visibility
Comprehensive supply chain visibility delivers instant online access to the status of a
transaction at any point in the continuum (see Example 1). By always knowing where your
transactions and documents are, you increase customer satisfaction through faster, more
complete communications.
Example 1: The Inovisworks VAN provides drill-down visibility into real-time transaction
status, key performance indicators (KPIs) and performance scorecards.
That customer satisfaction extends to your internal customers as well. IT organizations are
routinely overburdened with support requests from their business users, from "Where is my
PO Acknowledgement" to "Why do these numbers not match?" With deep visibility, IT
organizations can provide this information on demand or, better yet, enable the business
users to quickly locate the information they need themselves.
Comprehensive visibility also reduces compliance costs by giving you the ability to quickly
track exceptions to the point of failure and take immediate action to mitigate the error
before delays and chargebacks are levied. This level of visibility reduces overall operating
costs, saves time previously spent researching errors and helps you strengthen trading
community relationships.
Leading, next-generation solutions also feature extended archiving capabilities which enable
your business to easily access the historical business documents and data that form the
backbone of your trading partner relationships.
Delegated access
The instant link to key information delivered by comprehensive visibility becomes even more
powerful with delegated access. Delegated access capabilities let key players easily access
pertinent information and reports whenever and wherever they need them. Delegated
access also significantly reduces support costs by taking the burden off of your IT
department and giving role-based access directly to the end users. Each end user can
access the contextual information needed to perform specific tasks and reporting while IT is
freed up from running reports and controlling information access. Delegated access allows
your business to spend less time troubleshooting and more time working directly with
customers and focusing on business priorities.
Comprehensive transaction management capabilities
Information access is only one part of the equation in
successful supply chain management; another vital
factor is making the available data work toward running
your business more efficiently and more effectively.
An important capability available in next-generation
solutions is transaction management. With transaction
management, you can view a transaction'and all
related processes tied to that transaction'from start to
finish. This capability enables you to define parameters
for key metrics, key process steps and key events that
make your business successful. You can also receive
instant status notification as a transaction progresses
through your supply chain.
Transaction management delivers instant visibility into
the performance metrics that matter most and gives you
the ability to address issues on both sides of the supply
chain in real time. This level of visibility and control
makes a huge impact on reducing the costs of exception
management and significantly increases customer
satisfaction by enabling you to quickly respond to issues
before they escalate.
Factors to Consider When Selecting a Migration Partner
As your business works through the process of eliminating the challenges posed by
managing multiple VANs and moves toward gaining the competitive advantages offered by
next-generation EDI solutions, you should select a partner that offers the latest technology
available coupled with proven migration expertise.
The migration process can move very quickly when you choose a partner that offers a high
level of project management, a proven methodology and a detailed communication plan
that accounts for not only your business, but also your trading community.
Consolidating multiple VANs to one platform should be a
straightforward process, and can be successfully staged in
four steps:
- Comprehensive analysis of your existing VAN setup
- Development of an Implementation Roadmap
- Creation and execution of a Communication Plan to
Your Trading Community
- Switchover activities
Your migration partner should take the lead in planning
and executing these steps as well as performing
additional testing and monitoring to verify a successful
conversion.
Selecting a partner who understands your business
operations and takes your current and future business
requirements into account throughout each step of the
migration process can go a long way towards ensuring
your migration is seamless.
Best Practices Checklist for a Seamless VAN Migration
Companies change VAN providers for a variety of reasons: customer mandates, better
rates, more secure networks being a few. If you're considering making the switch, then
reference the following checklist to ensure a smooth transition. These migration best
practices have been refined over time from hundreds of Value-Added Network migrations.
- Prepare a comprehensive migration project plan for your internal users.
- Diagram the flow of your e, typically from your back-end application to your trading
partners' systems.
- Communicate the timing and effect of the impending move to your business users and
other IS organizations.
- Understand the impact of configuration changes, such as document filters and network
rules, which will impact transaction formats and routing.
- Setup a test infrastructure, and ensure parity between your test and production
systems.
- Make a list of all of your active trading partners (don't include the ones that have been
gathering dust in your system).
- List each trading partner's technical contact
- List each trading partner's EDI characteristics
- Sender/Receiver ID and qualifier
- Current VAN
- Current connectivity type
- Provision for the required connectivity type and user interface infrastructure.
- And don't forget: Run through mock migration day activities to ensure system and
resource readiness.
Inovisworks: Next-Generation Performance
Best-in-class solution
Recognized as the industry's most modern Value-Added Network, Inovisworks offers stateof-
the-art technology and secure and scalable solutions that enable you to fully leverage
your EDI infrastructure and maximize the value your supply chain operations deliver to your
bottom line.
Inovisworks routes over four million transactions each business day backed by the most
advanced data-exchange capabilities in the market and a Class 4 data center.
Inovisworks features the key capabilities you should expect from a next-generation EDI
solution, including comprehensive visibility, delegated access and comprehensive
transaction management.
Inovisworks goes beyond the industry standards and delivers innovative tools and features
that truly impact your supply chain communication efficiency:
- Single point of entry, enabling you to
communicate with every customer and supplier
regardless of what B2B format or protocol they
require
- High availability with 99.95% uptime
- Event Management features deliver instant
access to the performance metrics that matter
the most and empower you to mitigate
exceptions in real time
- Extended online archiving capabilities give you
easy access to up to ten years of historical data
- Comprehensive reporting features enable you to
quickly drill down into further levels of
transaction detail and share information across
your trading community
- Disaster recovery and business continuity
planning ensure you are meeting key customer
expectations
Migration made easy
Inovis' EDI migration process is simple and proven. We approach your project with the
expertise built from successfully completing more than 2,500 EDI implementations.
Our project management approach is designed to account for your business operations,
specific requirements and future business objectives.
Communication is a key piece of our migration process and keeping your business and your
trading partners informed along each step of the process is our standard procedure.
When you work with Inovis, expect a migration that is completed efficiently with minimal
disruption to your business. Our goal is to quickly and carefully complete your migration so
that your business can begin realizing immediately returns from the Inovisworks solution.
About Inovis
Inovis delivers solutions that empower companies to transact, collaborate and optimize
communications with their business communities. Over 20,133 customers use our
actionable intelligence offerings to reduce their costs of B2B transactions, increase their
opportunities to revenue and optimize collaboration with their trading partners. With over
20 years of expertise, Inovis delivers its products and services to companies over a wide
range of industries and markets across the globe.
Inovis was recently named a "Company on the Move" by Consumer Goods Technology, and
was included in Supply & Demand Chain Executive's "2006 Supply & Demand Chain
Executive 100," Inbound Logistics Magazine's "Top 100 Logistics IT Providers" and Apparel
Magazine's annual "Software Scorecard." In 2006, IDC ranked Inovis #15 on its list of top
Supplier Relationship Management Application Vendor table and #3 in the Worldwide
Supplier Collaboration Application market. For more information, visit www.inovis.com.