Supply Chain Collaboration

Our global market is represented by various supply chain stakeholders, such as suppliers, sub-contractors, logistics service providers and customers. The increasing volume of activities and transactions within this global market can lead to significant disruption of your daily activities if you are not connected to the digital highway used by this unified global supply chain. A disruption may not only affect your physical business process, it may also cause a negative domino effect throughout the supply chain. Delays in production lines, hold-ups during long haul shipments and sudden shifts in consumer demand are just some examples of the phenomena that can adversely affect your operational efficiency and supply chain collaboration level.

Furthermore, being connected is only the first step towards optimized Supply Chain Collaboration processes. The ability to maintain current and extend new connectivity, however might become intractable within ever-expanding supply chains. Continuous Supply Chain Collaboration is therefore crucial to actively and effectively managing, controlling and reacting to changes in volatile supply chains.

Obviously, successful Supply Chain Collaboration requires the involvement of all of the trading and service partners in your supply chain. This can be achieved by capturing your processes in a Supply Chain Collaboration Network. All trading & service partners within this network collaborate with you and, if applicable, with each other, based on the same level of shared information and the same procedural structures.

Supply Chain Collaboration: three levels

Efficient collaboration can take place at three levels: in combination, these levels form the end-to-end landscape of a Supply Chain Collaboration Network:

• Procure to Pay Collaboration to optimize processes with your suppliers.
• e-Logistics Collaboration to optimize processes with your carriers.
• Order to Cash Collaboration to optimize processes with your customers.