The Inovis Blog

ASC X12 has made significant strides in repositioning their go forward strategic focus to ensure support for every industry over the past year. Recent changes has included sponsoring conferences, partnering on best practice models for secure data exchange and focusing on automating processes, not just exchanging data.

The June Trimester acknowledges the 50th Anniversary of the Berlin Air lift, which was the first real use of electronic data exchange, albiet less structured. The change in X12’s mission is in direct response from industry requirements and the changes which have happen in business since the organization was originally launched in 1979 due to the increasing requirements for B2B automation and standardization of messages.

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More and more companies continue to be challenged to automate new parts of thier businesses communities, which may ultimately require automating with members of different industries with new requirements and a diverse set of transaction requirements previously not understood.

Two key industry organizations, VICS and ASCX12, are delivering new standards support, best practice models and global support requirements for cross-industry interactions and automation. 

ASC X12 continues to evolve their organization to deliver meaningful integration for all industries where effectively the transaction becomes the industry bridge.  This approach to delivering a cross industry set of transactions helps support better visibility and more effective business community management through use of standards based transactions, whether it’s automating Global Trade, integrating with carriers, Healthcare enrollments or just the traditional Order-to-Cash lifecylce deployed in most organizations.

Voluntary Interindustry Commerce Solutions‘ (VICS) is working to deliver a new comprehensive implementation model for Collaborative Transportation Management, which leverage core X12 transactions, defines the sequence of transaction and the owners of each transaction from a sender/receiver perspective. 

As community leaders, standards groups and technology partners work to deliver increased capabilities for cross-industry and global interactions the input from users is a very important part of the process to ensure success.  Below is an overview of the new high level X12 presentation which helps understand the work, the value and the impact of a given standards development organization.

With ongoing improvements to existing document content, investment in new transactional models and industry expertise groups such as VICS and X12 will continue to drive improvments for global connectivity and process integration. 

The transactions aren’t only about buyer and seller or carrier and customer - they are building blocks for multi-industry interoperability, which is becomming an increasingly important requirement for global business communities. 

Stopped to sample the samosa at Whole Foods Market. Not good to shop on an empty stomach and fill the cart with snacks. They had free wifi for multitasking, but I picked up a section of the Wall Street Journal to get some ink on my fingers.

The samosas were good, but the stories listed in the Business Insights really got me salivating. They were listed by category: Marketing, Global Business, Finance, Technology and Operations; all subjects of great interest.

Spent more time reading than expected because all the stories were good. The one I want to share was under Operations: The Hand That Feeds You. Nancy W. Nix, Robert F. Lusch, Zach G. Zacharia and Wesley Bridges wrote it. They’re scholars and experts in the fields of marketing and collaborative supply chain management.

The article, if you haven’t read it, is an in-depth and insightful analysis of supplier collaborations and how some businesses succeed where many fail.

B2B collaboration is becoming critical aspect of global trading partners, as market competition gets increasingly fierce while customer demand grows. Research indicates that even as companies collaborate with suppliers to deliver goods and services better and faster to remain competitive, the failure rate is high.

They define collaboration as: an intense process where partners exchange information and pool their capabilities to solve problems that can’t be tackled individually.

They offer four elements critical to successful collaboration between companies, and five questions a company should ask themselves to make collaborations work. I’ve distilled them here.

1. Be Willing to Engage – This requires sharing of information, making joint decisions, and resolving conflicts.
2. Build a Collaborative Environment – Like building a brand, it’s important that the whole company is on board with the collaboration process. This may involve hiring people specially trained to manage the issues of collaboration.
3. Learn from Your Partner – Increasing knowledge base, and the ability to absorb knowledge is important for companies to get past the “that’s not the way we do things here” mentality.
4. Bring Expertise to the Table – It’s important that both parties bring something unique and of value to the collaboration, else the relationship becomes one-sided with one partner dependent on the other.

 The questions are:

1. Do you recognize when collaboration is needed vs. a more direct solution?
2. Is senior management committed to the process?
3. Can you improve on your collaborative team, and be willing to share information and ideas?
4. Are you open to new ideas, and willing to learn from partners?
5. Are you committed to making the relationship work?

This complete article, along with the others read with my samosas, can be accessed online at MIT Sloan Management Review.

Ran across a very informative analysis written by Bob Kantin President of SalesProposals.com, Michael J. Nick, President of ROI4Sales, and Tim Sullivan, Development Director at SPISales.com.

It focused on how to train a sales force into being top sellers, what they call eagles, and how what used to be a commodity-transaction sales process has evolved into a complex selling process that requires building relationships.

Sales professionals must become business consultants that provide a clear return on investment (ROI) proposition to retain a competitive advantage in the current market.

The author’s ask three important questions to assess the skills and tools a sales force brings to play in the sales process. We found the information relevant from an IT buyer’s perspective as helpful guidelines in evaluating an IT purchasing decision based on the selling skills and knowledge level of the seller.

1. Do your sales pros follow a consultative sales process built around their unique products & services?
2. Can the sales pro deliver an accurate and fair ROI for their products/services that will make or save you money?
3. Are the sales pros creating informative proposals focused on your needs?

Additional information and resources are provided on how to use an ROI analysis system, and an automated proposal production system. There is also a simple, effective self-assessment that outlines the current effectiveness of a sales pro’s consultative approach. It’s a good read for both buyers and sellers and a free download with registration at itbusinessedge.com.