Selecting a B2B Managed Services Provider
Selecting a B2B managed services provider is a strategic decision that has a profound impact on a company's ability to deliver on business objectives. In making that choice, a company needs to ask questions not just about the technology offered by the vendor but also about its processes and people.
The key to deploying B2B solutions is flexibility and inclusiveness. Companies of all sizes should be able to take advantage of the benefits of B2B managed services—find a provider that offers solutions that fit the needs of your business. B2B projects struggle to take off when, because of the technical limitations on one side or the other, a business or its trading partners fail to automate B2B transactions. If it is too hard to automate critical B2B processes, a business may lose potentially lucrative customers or feel forced to abandon good suppliers. A B2B managed services provider should provide a range of options for a wide variety of trading partners—options that open up opportunities, rather than close them down.
When it comes to technology, a vendor should have:
- A global infrastructure—Few companies transact only with trading partners in their own country or region. Working with a B2B managed services provider with a global presence will ensure communications with current trading partners and make it easier, when seeking new suppliers or customers, to exploit new geographies or industry sectors.
- Support for a broad range of B2B translation and communication standards—Connect to trading partners f and seek out new partners, without having to worry about technical limitations.
- Support for a broad range of integration mechanisms: web forms, integration to accounting or ERP packages, and direct connections—Bring a wider range of partners, including smaller partners or partners in emerging markets where the level of technological development is low, into an electronic trading network. Share data through web-based solutions.
- The ability to deliver every application in the process, including translation and transmission of data—Vendors should be able to offer flexible and customized services that mesh with a company's existing investments in B2B e-commerce and that provide the same flexibility to trading partners, rather than just replacing previous services.
When it comes to process, a vendor should have:
- Full B2B program management, including both technical implementation and ongoing maintenance —Two things are certain about a B2B solution: it will be technically complex and it will be constantly changing, as standards evolve and as your many trading partners change their systems. A vendor should have strong processes for installing, rolling out and testing solutions, and for managing the introduction of new elements into the solution.
- Ongoing monitoring and reporting for specific events and for overall performance—A basic B2B solution will guarantee that transactions happen once and once only and will provide exception reporting for problem transactions. However, a B2B managed services provider should be able to offer much more in the way of audit and analysis. For instance, a B2B managed services provider can help gather and analyze information on the performance of trading partners, including important criteria such as speed of response, performance against delivery targets for suppliers, speed of payment for customers and other measures.
- Support of community management activities, such as trading partner ramping, synchronization of product data, synchronization of inventory information, and access to product catalogs.
- Flexibility to allow a business to outsource as much or as little of its B2B solution as desired, and still enable the business to take it back in-house, if that makes business sense for the company.
Finally, a vendor should have the right people to enhance B2B capabilities. Look for a vendor with:
- Technical expertise to manage a complex technical solution and ensure it delivers robustly and securely to a service level agreement that meets business needs.
- Business process design expertise to ensure that robust, efficient processes are implemented to communicate with trading partners and internal processes are streamlined to achieve maximum benefit.
- Community management expertise to help bring on board new trading partners, negotiate protocols and processes and to manage change within an existing trading partner community.
- 24x7 support in the native language(s) of your customer and its trading partners.
- Change management expertise to deal with the constant evolution of technology, data exchange standards, and turnover in a trading partner community.