E-commerce demand is experiencing tremendous jumps year over year. If you sell products online, you most likely follow one of two different ERP business models to manage your supply chain. The first and more traditional model: you have your own factory, a sales department and warehouse. Supply Chain Management, Logistics Management and Business Process Management is typically managed by one ERP system. The second model, as well as rapidly increasing trend, is to outsource parts of the supply chain including manufacturing, and delivery and distribution via a Third-Party Logistics (“3PL”) partner. In either case, a trusted ERP like Supply Chain Management helps you manage resources and inventory, resolve any product issues quickly, mitigate delays and ultimately accelerate your time to market.
However, if you operate using the second model, you know that working with the multiple business processes and systems of your partners can create a bit of a pain point. It can become a challenge to maintain an agile supply chain from managing communications to accessing streaming analytics. Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management unifies your data, but if you work with multiple supply chain partners, you must also create secure connections to the third-party systems, and that means multiple connections to manage individually. Integrating your ERP with an Electronic Data Interchange (“EDI”) is an effective solution that enhances visibility and real-time data access across the entire supply chain.
More on that in a bit. First, let’s explore the possible challenges you may face when multiple partners are part of your supply chain.
Synchronized Data
You need to track all data surrounding the sale when it comes in through the internet. This needs to be communicated to the manufacturer to get the product produced, and to the 3PL to get it distributed to the right place. You also need to synchronize data to communicate issues like shrinkage and lost orders.
Data Analytics & Tracking
Business impact analytics is critical to ERP business processes, so you need to have access to the data to support your internal analysis. You may lack visibility to your inventory, but buyers will want to know what you have in stock in real time. Inventory and raw materials are with your manufacturers and 3PLs. You also need to tie invoicing and properly categorize all the costs through inventory and costs of goods sold to various sales channels. Then there is the question of how to get access to financial data such as sales territory, regions, and product types sold.
Multiple Data Connections
You as the seller must communicate with multiple providers in the supply chain electronically. If for example you sell on four online stores, work with a manufacturer and three 3PLs, this would require a standard data integration from Dynamics 365 to EIGHT different partners involved in the supply chain.
Now let’s explore how Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management can integrate with EDIs for process improvement to simplify logistics, supply chain management (“scm”) and ensure compliance.
like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management serve as a centralized management point to stay connected and streamline your operations, build agile processes, and optimize resources to consistently deliver your products on time. Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management features the robust capabilities you need to optimize inventory, warehousing, fulfillment, material sourcing, and supply chain logistics.
If you work with multiple partners, instead of creating multiple connections, you can work with an EDI partner that provides one simplified, centralized place to manage and broker all the traffic and transactions back and forth between Dynamics 365 and your various suppliers. Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management integrates with EDI to enhance tracking of all your transactions, inventory management, and fulfillment.
EDI partners already have the connections and transactions established with all the common trade partners in the supply chain. They work with all the and common 3PLs and can easily build a new connector as you need. EDI partners don’t just provide EDI connections. They have portal service for vendors and customers.
Get Started with JourneyTEAM
JourneyTEAM was recently awarded and the Microsoft Eagle Crystal trophy as a top 5 partner for Dynamics 365 Business Central software implementations. We have heard from many companies looking for a flexible, scalable solution to address their challenges with the ecommerce outsource business model. We can provide demos and full custom introductions to determine if an EDI integration with Dynamics 365 is right for your organization. !
Article by: George Sagen - ERP Solution Architect | 801-938-7821
JourneyTEAM is an award-winning consulting firm with proven technology and measurable results. They take Microsoft products; Dynamics 365, SharePoint intranet, Office 365, Azure, CRM, GP, NAV, SL, AX, and modify them to work for you. The team has expert level, Microsoft Gold certified consultants that dive deep into the dynamics of your organization and solve complex issues. They have solutions for sales, marketing, productivity, collaboration, analytics, accounting, security and more.
