B2BGateway EDI Order Portals – Receive your orders faster and error free!

 

Question: Are many of your customers still calling in, faxing or emailing their orders to you? Does this put a strain on your staff resources, create errors and confusion, and generally make your supply chain processes less efficient? If the answer is yes to any of the above, it is time that you considered introducing a B2BGateway Order Portal to allow efficient communications between your organization and your customers. Having a B2BGateway Order Portal will allow your organization to:

·         Display all your products on a drop down menu allowing your customers to choose which products and quantity that they would like to order electronically.

·         Eliminate paper, phone calls and email orders. Have one simple solution for your organizations order taking.

·         Import orders (EDI 850) from your customers direct to your back end Accounting/ERP software system. Full seamless, cloud based integration with no need to re-key data.

·         The B2BGateway Order Portal will be fully customized with your organizations, branding, colors and logos.

·         Reduce costs, errors and labor associated with manual data entry.

·         Add or delete customers as the need arises.

·         Communicate special offers, end of product lines, events or trade information.

·         Be compliant with all global EDI standards including ANSI X12, UN/EDIFACT, EANCOM, Tradacoms, Odette, XML etc.

What are the benefits for your customers?

·         As the solution is web based your customers will not need to invest in additional hardware or software systems – all they will require is a computer and an internet connection.

·         Your customers will be able to create, send, save and edit all orders that they send to your organization.

·         Past orders can be copied to create a new order in order to facilitate easy ordering.

·         There is an on screen record of all transactions and your customers will have the ability to edit their own company information and login passwords.

·         It helps speed up the ‘Order to Payment’ cash cycle and streamline the overall supply chain process.

For further information on B2BGateway’s Order Portal and how it can help you achive great overall supply chain efficiencies between your organization and your customers please click here or email Sales@B2BGateway.Net

 

 

B2BGateway’s EDI solutions achieve ‘Built for NetSuite’ verification.

‘Built for NetSuite’ is a new program for NetSuite SuiteCloud Developer Network (SDN) partners that provides them with information, resources and a method to verify that their applications and integrations, built using the NetSuite SuiteCloud Computing Platform, meet new NetSuite standards and best practices. The ‘Built for NetSuite’ program is designed to give NetSuite customers additional confidence that SuiteApps have been built to meet these standards.

To participate in ‘Built for NetSuite’, B2BGateway a long term NetSuite EDI partner since 2001,  was required to review its NetSuite EDI SuiteApp solution against NetSuite's standards and submit to NetSuite a verification of compliance with the documented practices for architecture, development, privacy and security. The ‘Built for NetSuite’ review team also required B2BGateway to provide a demonstration of its fully integrated EDI solution for NetSuite as well as positive customer references. B2BGateway will repeat the verification semi-annually in sync with the NetSuite product release cycle in order to maintain its ‘Built for NetSuite’ badge.

 

For more information on B2BGateway's EDI solutions for NetSuite please visit www.B2BGateway.Net

Congratulations to Russ Griffith of e2b teknologies - Winner of our Hot Air Balloon Ride at Sage Summit!

Congratulations to Russ Griffith of e2b technologies, winner of our grand prize of a Hot Air Balloon Ride at last year’s Sage Summit. Russ had a great time travelling over some spectacular scenery and sent us these pictures with a brief note: “I wanted to let you (B2BGateway.Net) know that we were able to take our balloon ride over this past weekend.  We flew on Sunday morning and it was absolutely great!  I wanted to say thank you again!  My sister and I had a great time on the flight and we got a few pictures that I wanted to share with you”. We are so glad that you enjoyed it Russ and we look forward to meeting you and all the Sage partners and clients again at this years Sage Summit which takes place at the Gaylord National Hotel & Convention Center | National Harbor, MD (near Washington, DC) from July 21-26, 2013.

To learn more about B2BGateway.Net's cloud based, fully integrated EDI solutions for Sage please visit www.B2BGateway.Net

Webinar: 4 Reasons ERP Software Experts Prefer EDI by B2BGateway

 

 

 

Click on the above image to register for our latest webinar in association with ERP VAR: 4 Reasons ERP Software Experts Prefer EDI by B2BGateway.

Call +1 (401) 491 9595 or email Sales@B2BGateway.Net for further details.

What is AS2?

Question: Hi Louisa, I have just landed a contract to supply Walmart (woohoo!) but they want me to do EDI by using something called AS2. Do you know what AS2 is?

 
Answer: Hi Jim, thanks for the question. Yes, AS2 (Applicability Statement 2) is a specification intended to ensure the proper level of security and reliability for data transmitted over the Internet. Security is achieved by using digital certificates and encryption. In short AS2 is a secure way to exchange data over the internet, in this case the exchange of PO’s, Invoices and ASNs (Advance Ship Notices) between your organization and Walmart.

Document exchange requires more than just moving data over a wire. Because business documents are the basis not only of business planning and operations, but also the legal obligations between companies, the documents must be transferred securely, processed quickly and delivered reliably. AS2 is one of a small number of emerging standards that addresses these requirements and is becoming a very popular communication protocol used in EDI today. Walmart has been one of the great advocates of the adoption of AS2 in the EDI marketplace and many more have followed since.

If you would like to learn more about AS2 or indeed any other EDI communication protocol such as VAN, FTP, FTPs, HTTP, etc please email Sales@B2BGateway.Net or call (401) 491 9595 for further details.

Louisa Gooding is Director of Sales & Marketing at B2BGateway.Net

 

Healthcare Industry and the EDI 835 and EDI 837 Transaction Sets.

Question: Hi Louisa, I work in the Healthcare Industry and have been recently asked by one of our trading partners if we can handle the EDI 837 and EDI 835 Transaction Sets. Do you know what these are?

Answer: Hi Stephanie, thanks for your question. I will answer separately on both the EDI 837 and EDI 835 as follows:

The EDI Health Care Claim Transaction set (EDI 837) is used to submit health care claim billing information, encounter information, or both. It can be sent from providers of healthcare services to payers, either directly or via intermediary billers and claims clearinghouses. It can also be used to transmit health care claims and billing payment information between payers with different payment responsibilities where co-ordination of benefits is required.

EDI Health Care Claim Payment/Advice Transaction Set (EDI 835) can be used to make a payment, send an Explanation of Benefits (EOB), send an Explanation of Payments (EOP) remittance advice, or make a payment and send an EOP remittance advice only from a health insurer to a health care provider either directly or via a financial institution.

These transaction sets can be quite complicated to set up and if you are new to EDI, I would recommend that you outsource this function to an established 3^rd party EDI provider. For further details on EDI in the Healthcare Industry and the EDI 837 and EDI 835 transactions sets, please visit www.B2BGateway.Net or call (401) 491 9595

Louisa Gooding is Director of Sales & Marketing at B2BGateway.



Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) and the EDI 852 Transaction Set.

Question: Hi Louisa, our customer (a large store retailer) wants us to do something called VMI and the EDI 852 document. Do you know what these mean?

Answer: Hi Todd, thanks for your question. Vendor-Managed inventory (VMI) is a business model in which the buyer of a product provides certain information to a vendor/supplier of that product and the supplier takes full responsibility for maintaining an agreed level of inventory, usually at the buyer's store. A third-party logistics provider (3PL) can also be involved to make sure that the buyer has the required level of inventory by adjusting the demand and supply gaps.

VMI helps develop a closer understanding between the supplier and buyer by using Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) formats; with one of the most common EDI transaction sets being the 852 (Product Activity Data document) . EDI 852 transaction sets may vary, but will typically contain the following information:

For each item
- Item description
- Item UPC

Data can be summarized by:
- Store
- Distribution center

Key product activity measures
- Quantity sold ($)
- Quantity sold (units)
- Quantity on hand ($)
- Quantity on hand (units)
- Quantity on order ($)
- Quantity on order (units)
- Quantity received ($)
- Quantity received (units)

The EDI 852 information can be sent from the buyer to the supplier on a weekly or daily basis. The order decision is based on the data in the 852 transmission. The supplier reviews the information that has been received from the buyer and an order determination is made based on the existing agreement between the supplier and buyer.

The EDI software will verify if the data is accurate and meaningful and will calculate a re-order point for each item based on the data and minimum stock levels agreed between buyer and supplier.

As a symbiotic relationship, VMI makes it less likely that a business will unintentionally become out of stock of an item and reduces inventory in the supply chain. Furthermore, supplier representatives in a store benefit the buyer by ensuring the product is properly displayed and store staff are familiar with the features of the product line. Suppliers benefit from more control of displays and consistent orders.

For further details on Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) and the EDI 852 transactions set, please visit www.B2BGateway.Net or call (401) 491 9595

Louisa Gooding is Director of Sales & Marketing at B2BGateway.