The Inovis Blog

I’m out on the road again to meet with our strategic partners from around the globe at the Annual EMEA Partner Event for Inovis, this year’s event is being hosted just outside Manchester, UK. The event is a key opportunity for Inovis and our partners to discuss regional trends, new solutions and deployment options that our joint customers are leveraging in their business communities.

Hybrid Trading = Hybrid BUSINESS

The growing trend is hybrid trading – that is to say that organizations deploy both software and service to support their business community requirements. This concept has been around for quite some time and Inovis has been actively recommending a best practice approach to B2B along these lines for years. The interesting twist is that it is not only the way some companies support B2B integration that is hyrbrid, but also how globalization is making most businesses “hybrid” in a new way. Organizations today are virtual – the enterprise, the product and the brand are a hyrbid or the combined efforts a communities strategic partners and combined components/solutions. Inovis is no different than every one of our customers in that matter, we leverage business partners to ensure success.

Organizations today are leveraging strategic partners for fulfillment, production and value-added services throughout their business communities to ensure customer satisfaction in respect to quality of service and product quality. More and more hybrid production and fulfillment are becoming critical success factors in the market in respect to maintaining a competitive advantage in a global marketplace. Examples of such hybrid business realities we see at Inovis are contract manufacturers which are essentially an extension of your business or direct-to-consumer activities in multi-channel commerce, again a hybrid brand approach, each of these and many more examples (design, sourcing…) exist that businesses are sharing processes in a hybrid fashion for the mutual benefit of the consumer, retailer and the manufacturer. This is same in every industry, which is why Inovis continues to partner with industry experts to deliver localized services and support. Inovis has over 150 business partners globally supporting our shared customers in shared communities while driving business improvements with their domain expertise and systems integration capabilities.

The Complex Hybrid

The picture of the roundabout above is an interesting metaphor for the complexity of how to support the needs of your business.   Often the decision to be made for many businesses is Managed Services vs. software. Increasingly this is becoming a different decision cycle—not only which way do you want to go, but which way do you NEED to go to impact change inside your business and comply to the governmental and partner requirements.

Understanding the customer requirements is critical to ensure the right solution is in place for a given community. This will vary by industry, geography and relative “location” in a supply chain. Complex hybrid requirements are the norm, rather than the exception today. This is why partners are critical to Inovis and our customers – they provide systems, applications and a localized understanding of the requirements to be successful.

Inovis’ partners are essentially trusted advisers for their in-country requirements, industry knowledge and business needs. Inovis’ hybrid approach to enabling our partners with best in class technology and product expertise provides access to resources that can enable trading partners in France, the UK, Italy, Germany and throughout Asia. Inovis has created a partner program with Inovis leaders in all geographies with feet on the street—the America’s, the EU and Asia—to provide the necessary implementation, support and account management services for our customers no matter where they are or their trading partners.

A Global MESH for Hybrid Trading and Business

With the launch of the MESH platform and the continuing focus on bringing innovation to all our platforms and partners, the Inovis partner program represents a key way we drive increased automation for the business communities which are managed with Inovis solutions. With an integrated product portfolio to enable strategic partners to connect directly with your organization with an AS2 connection or the flexible options to use Inovisworks and Webware to connect to your other partners, Inovis continues to focus on delivering solutions that support the complexity of hybrid trading and the changing dynamics of hybrid business.