August 27, 2007
Changing fashions in e-business:
Small to medium-sized suppliers call for process standards
Over recent years, customers have been much more of a force behind the standardization of business processes in the supplier industry. Now the drive is increasingly coming from small and medium-sized suppliers. In order to cut costs and controlling expenditure in communicating with customers, they are calling for uniform processes and standardized e-business platforms like SupplyOn.
Synergies can only result from standards
“If you have to operate a large number of portals, you can neither design efficient processes nor achieve synergies and learning effects,” says André Rothfuss, Vice President of Information Technology and Organization at BERU. “Establishing a standard process platform can not only save money in terms of implementaion and training but can also greatly reduce total investment costs throughout the cooperation.” Wolfgang Hellmann, Head of Sales at Stumpp+Schüle GmbH also understands the synergy effects of a standard platform: “Using standardized solutions like those from SupplyOn is essential to optimum process organization. We presently already use SupplyOn to communicate with five of our customers and would very much like to see more companies using these standard processes in supplier management.”
Bernd Osowski, responsible for setting up the central document management system at Hirschvogel, is particularly impressed by the network effects which can result from using a standard platform: “We and our customers face very similar issues and therefore discuss possible solutions together on the basis of SupplyOn. So it makes sense for as many partners as possible to use the same standard which provides a common technological basis for exchanging documents and other processes spanning several companies.”
Markus Quicken, member of the board at SupplyOn AG, believes that the ever louder call for standard solutions when collaborations involve several companies is only natural: “No company has ever hit on the idea of setting up its own phone network. So it’s only logical that small and medium-sized suppliers in particular are calling for a common solution.”
