BPM-EAI

Trading partners have the key to success of any B2B ecosystem by having a direct impact on the ‘partner satisfaction’ index. Enterprises, despite successfully establishing a state of art B2B infrastructure and efficient processes, face difficulty in encouraging trading partners to transact. In such cases, the reason for an inefficient trading partner community goes beyond the premise of people, process and technology aspect.

This calls for an efficient steady state partner management process that incentivizes strategic trading partners as well as managing expectations of the high performing partners. Keeping B2B technology capabilities and the strategic importance of the partners in mind, we propose a trading partner matrix illustrated below:

• Dream Team (Highly Critical, Better Capability) –Sufficient incentive to be provided to partners in this space to transact at maximum capacity.
  
• Potentials (Highly Critical, Low Capability) – This group should get maximum attention and support to improve their technology capability, and move into ‘Dream Team’ category to benefit from the incentives.
  
• The Riders (Less Critical, Better Capability) – These partners are high on B2B maturity and need the least attention due to non-critical nature of transactions. Care should be taken that these groups do not move into the ‘laggard’ zone.
  
• Laggards (Less Critical, Low Capability) – Partners in this category should be encouraged to move to “the riders’ zone.

The ideal steady state should have all trading partners in ‘the riders’ and the ‘dream team’ category.

But, how do we achieve it?

In the proposed matrix structure, “criticality” of trading partners is beyond control as they are governed by organizational directives. We do not expect organizations to enhance the "criticality" of trading partners because of their B2B capabilities.

Hence the focus should be on helping trading partners enhance their “capability”.  Some enterprises have proactively adopted the following to ensure that “capability” is not a challenge in transactions:

• SaaS based B2B platform provided by SIs/B2B product vendors
  
• VAN based services provided by B2B product vendors.

If the above does not work, as a last resort, enterprises can provide appropriate support in terms of SLAs, incentives, availability of tools & accelerators to aid the trading partners.

Posted by Piyush Swain at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last decade saw an increase in B2B adoption driven by the emergence of EDI standards and need for supply chain collaboration. However, the stark difference in state of B2B platforms after the initial hype is intriguing. We find that some B2B platforms have flourished whereas at the other end of spectrum enterprises are struggling to fund their B2B initiatives. Unless driven by regulatory requirements, the state of B2B platforms is driven by their status as cost centers and profit centers.

Enterprises that have made B2B platforms as profit centers mandate their trading partners to pay per transactions. Such enterprises justify their B2B transaction based payments through performance driven SLAs.  Revenue earning capability of such B2B ecosystem have enabled enterprises to introduce value added features like integrated trading partner management systems incentivizing new partners to join. This results in a cycle where increase in trading partners’ results in higher revenue realization that in turn encourages enterprises to introduce end of the line value added features. This paves way for evolution of an efficient B2B ecosystem.

It will be incorrect to compare cost centric B2B ecosystems with profit centric B2B ecosystem. We could however look at the kind of B2B ecosystems that can be converted from cost centers to profit centers:

• The enterprise has monopoly in offerings (products/services) and is not bound by regulations.
  
• Government agencies where trading partners are bound to transact due to regulations.
  
• Enterprises that provide essential services (esp. in areas like utilities and healthcare)

Often enterprises struggle to justify their B2B enhancement initiatives. In case they run out of alternatives, opting for temporary status as profit centers can be a novel idea to fund these initiatives.

Interestingly, B2B ecosystems that are profit centers are scattered across industry verticals and have no designated patterns. So the option to make convert B2B ecosystems from cost center to profit center lies with the enterprises themselves.

Posted by Piyush Swain at 09:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So one has heard about Integration Competency Center (ICC), read analyst briefs on it and understood another three letter acronym. But the questions still lingers in the back of the mind “How do I figure out if we need an ICC”? “We are already doing integration projects and doing Ok, so how do I sell this idea internally” OR “We know things are not working well for us in integration projects and there are issues, but where do we make a start?”. If you empathize with this situation (and it is a common one based on what we hear from our prospects), read on. In this blog series, I will share my thoughts on challenges and approaches when it comes to handling the most critical phase in your ICC journey ‘Getting started with it”. This phase will mostly involve envisioning, business case creation, internal selling, evangelization and roadmap development. 

Irrespective of context behind ICC conceptualization, a clear answer to following questions need to be arrived at during this initial phase. 

1. How does ICC fit in my 2-3 years IT and Integration portfolio roadmap (for creating the larger strategic vision and selling it)?

2. What are current challenges and issues that justify the business case for an ICC? (for a compelling case for quick ROI so that your CFO loves it)

3. Who are the stakeholders impacted by ICC rollout and how do I get their buy-in? (for navigating your way through maze called ‘organization’)

5. Where to make the start and how to prioritize to ensure that we prepare the proper ground first for scaling up and cover the risks? (for giving confidence to others that this can be pulled off)

6. How do I ensure co-existences of ICC with other relevant organizational parts and capabilities and leverage them? (for achieving an ICC eco-system based on collaboration and getting required support) 

I mentioned the term ‘Context’ behind ICC conceptualization earlier. Let me explain what I mean here. There are mainly two dimensions to this. One is the source of motivation or trigger why you are looking at ICC? Is there a crisis already at hand (e.g. unstable production systems, inability to support key business initiatives with integration solutions, poor quality of solutions etc.) that is identified and needs to be addressed or you see ICC as a required model to manage the scale of integration landscape you will have in next 2 years? Now both these motivations are different in nature and require different approaches to address ICC adoption.

Second dimension is around ‘preparedness’. What is the level of preparedness your organization has to adopt ICC? This dimension will have elements like IT organization structure, skills and competencies, previous experience with shared models and other form of competency centers deployment. So essentially if point # 1 above represents the ‘hunger’ for ICC, this point represents to ability to ‘digest’. Look at both to tailor make the approach to get ICC up and running.

In the next part of this blog, I will be covering the topic of ‘Strategic vision for ICC’. Why it is critical to have this view and what all to consider in order to come out with a effective strategy? Watch out and do share your views on this post.

Posted by Kapil Mishra at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)