Manufacturers’ supply chains are missing out on fast, low cost portal technology

Manufacturers are still failing to respond to the low cost, high return opportunities of ‘collaborative commerce’, according to e-business system vendor and implementer Perwill. Marketing manager James Wilkinson says those already using EDI are “beginning to wake up” to the value of going wider into their supply chains through web-based e-commerce. But he believes investment is being held up because of the economic climate and early hype over web working, the dot.com failures and so on. There are also concerns over business information sharing, business culture, data security, supposed enterprise integration needs and revealing what’s really happening inside manufacturing companies’ shopfloors – as well as the fear factor. But Wilkinson points out that all these, with the exception of getting your own house in order, need not be a barrier to SME supply chains working together electronically and achieving efficiencies and savings very quickly. Posting forecasts and call-offs on a private portal with some workflow and linking back to despatch notes, goods received and invoicing etc, is a low cost practical reality. A cluster of SME suppliers around a mid size Tier Two or Three supplier, for example the Autoclear project in the West Midlands involving Unipart and GKN, or Trico’s implementation, costs around £50,000 total in software and professional services. And the SME suppliers need pay none of this if they’re on the receiving end of CSV flat files, or Internet browser interfaces only – other perhaps than a charge for testing and validation. It’s also fast. A project like Autoclear, powered by Perwill’s e-business manager portal, took just 15 days to pilot, with a roll-out measurable in days and weeks, not months or years. There are several software and services providers in this field with relevant experience, among them Perwill, Wesupply and Iona, as well as much of the ERP community. You can’t afford to abdicate responsibility for your internal systems, but you can’t afford to be complacent where your customers are concerned either. This level of collaborative commerce should be on almost every manufacturing business agenda.