The Hidden Costs of Legacy B2B Architectures

Modernize and Consolidate Older Systems to Dramatically Reduce Overhead

The Pressure to Upgrade
Companies are seeing the need to modernize and consolidate their fractured B2B environments. Part of the impetus comes from the evolution of business partner communications from the original EDI standards to modern file formats like XML and a proliferation of communication protocols. Point solutions added over time to accommodate these needs have increased management overhead and complicated supply chain production and logistics processes. The spread of global business, with the need to use different EDI protocols in different geographies, exacerbates the problem.

Organizations worldwide are realizing that older B2B platforms reduce their ability to remain competitive in today’s marketplace. Factors influencing this conclusion include:

  • Demands from trading partners for smooth B2B integration that will minimize inventory, maximize stock turnover, and optimize customer service
  • The still-commonplace, expensive, and error-prone practice of exchanging transaction messages with suppliers manually
  • The cost of older technologies in terms of monitoring and maintenance, as well as a lack of functionality such as message tracking that must be overcome with manual intervention