Over the last four decades, EDI has steadily gained mainstream adoption throughout businesses worldwide as the preferred means to exchange documents in the B2B transaction process. During this time the emergence of Internet B2B, including new transport protocols like AS2, numerous flavours of XML-based B2B document standards, API-based B2B integration, have mostly complemented EDI rather than replaced it. EDI has grown and matured and today, like ERP systems, remains a backbone for global business.
To replace the existing ageing and expensive EDI technology, INToo Solutions has architected, designed, build and rolled out its cloud B2B Trading Exchange powered with
- AI Trading Machine,
- near real-time web communication, and
- document collaboration which covers all the stages of the business transactions.
Within eCBK EDI, the document collaboration framework establishes intrinsic integration between the B2B trading exchange and the cloud ERP modules. In this way, eCBK makes EDI relic of the past like the typewriters.
eCBK brings all business transactions stakeholders (sellers, suppliers, distributors, manufacturers, banks & financial payment engine and even individual employees) in one hub replacing not only the EDI but also the faxes and email. The transaction stakeholders scope of access is private and with permissions. eCBK covers the following main document categories:
- Inventory list
- Sales Orders and Purchase Orders with a workflow to cover cancellations and returns
- Packing and Receiving notes
- AR/Sales Invoices and AP/Purchase Invoices
- Expense Application
- Certificate of origin
- Credit Application
- Payment Processing
eCBK provides “frictionless” commerce transaction, to eliminate outdated manual paper processes, and delivered significant and persistent broad supply chain efficiencies through:
- Large scale of data automation.
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Collaborative Document Communications.
- Web communication includes multi-party supply chain collaboration by invitation which establishes managed web logins for EDI participants (e.g. clients and suppliers). A specified level of access profiles these logins.
As usage and interoperability across trading partners expands, businesses can also capitalize on a much faster ROI compared to traditional EDI usage models.
In eCBK, the information shared between stakeholders is not only focused on the supply chain “milestones” for core business processes, such as notifying that a PO was just sent, a shipment has just started, or an Invoice was just sent. eCBK design can include handling more sophisticated events from new kinds of “users” like IoT sensors or a digital camera associated with receiving notes to report a damaged part received on the factory floor and triggering a notification. This is rendered possible because of eCBK architecture associates document with events and triggers. eCBK is built on top of a novel software framework to be able to engage in emerging, continuous digital business processes and empower AI learning machines through chained data pools with no boundaries.
INToo Solutions believes that in coming years businesses must take a good look at and “double-down” their investments in working together with partners to achieve shared goals and outcomes that ultimately deliver on a superior end-customer experience. Despite billions of dollars in IT investments over several years and numerous studies on the value of collaboration, supply chain collaboration and communication remains in many respects “limited and unfinished business” with tremendous upside opportunity to drive new levels of supply chain excellence by relying on AI and blockchain. Business owners will be able to share more data through IoT mechanisms, based on a single shared version of the truth enabled through a blockchain “backbone,” and facilitated by AI technology that can streamline root cause analysis and introduce new forms of business opportunities.
eCBK based on our novel software framework creates by default a blockchain-powered data Network which adds the concept of a “shared version of the truth” for information flows exchanged across participants of the exchange network. eCBK blockchain provides a tamper-proof record of all supply chain events. eCBK brings together the trading exchange, IoT and other future kinds of events to synthesize a wider data pool, with appropriate access permissions, the traditional chargeback submission process can be streamlined without the need for more devices (faxes, telephone, emails, etc.) and solutions. This can avoid disputing “the facts” of a given transaction and the conversation can more quickly turn to root cause and improvement.
eCBK as a cloud software solution made the multiparty collaborative automation possible today, helping small and medium businesses to accelerate their innovation in practices, such as using AI agent technology to perform multi-party process orchestration, leveraging blockchain and multiparty application integration.