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01-09-2007
B2B: FLUIDWINThe innovative way to on demand service supplying. After the speculative bubble burst, the web world has gone back to being a (particularly interesting and exciting) branch of information technology. In particular, internet applications for enterprises have for a few years now re-focussed on ‘classic’ issues such as supply chain management. As far as this specific theme is concerned, IT world companies have extended their supply range, which has resulted in remarkable SCM (supply chain management) project diffusion - although these projects are still far from having become widely popular. One of the main obstacles invariably encountered by the manufacturing industry when attempting to implement these projects is the difficulty experienced in obtaining integrated supplier adhesion. In other words, when a company decides to launch a project aimed at implementing a supplier portal, it is rather easy to talk suppliers into interacting on the portal via the browser: a supplier can actually find it easier to review and print out orders in this way. It is harder, though, to convince suppliers to transmit to the portal electronic information “extracted” from their own management systems, for example, bills, notes and invoices. In this respect, the Joinet experience is especially significant. In 2001, Joinet launched its MaNeM application to handle suppliers via the web. This application is still used today by over a dozen top manufacturing companies in Italy (including, among others, Ducati Motor and Bticino) and 500 of their suppliers. MaNeM is an application supplied by Joinet based on the ASP technology which, beside offering a browser interface based on icons, enables suppliers to achieve easy and direct dialogue between MaNeM and the supplier’s management system. Around half of the above-mentioned 500 suppliers have started direct exchange of electronic format information between MaNeM and their own management systems, ‘extracting’ for example shipping documents and purchasing invoices. It is not easy, however, to talk suppliers into introducing this change, because they find it hard to see the new system value for them (while the added value is immediately clear for the suppliers’ customers, who will receive in an electronic format the documents that they would previously receive as ‘hard’ copies). In 2005 Joinet, together with other partners, had an idea to ensure that data extraction from the supplier management system implied major added value for the supplier, too: to allow the same electronic data used in the system to be used by the supplier to obtain access to financial and logistical services in an integrated manner. This idea led to the presentation to the European Community of a project named FLUID-WIN, which the EC accepted to co-finance and started on 1st January 2006. The initial project consideration is that, in B2B applications such as MaNeM, there is a thick flow of information already in an electronic format. The idea at the basis of FLUID-WIN is to make the most of this information availability - allowing manufacturing companies and their suppliers to obtain automatic access to logistical and financial services supplied by other suppliers. Examples of this are: - A supplier generates electronic information for its customer to advise that the customer’s ordered goods are ready for collection and transmits the information to the B2B application; this electronic format information can automatically be made available to the forwarders appointed to transport the goods to the customer’s premises. - A supplier generates an electronic invoice for its customer and transmits it to the application B2B; this electronic format invoice can automatically be made available to a factoring company. In both cases, a service supply company can connect to a B2B application and supply its services by making the most of the many advantages offered by IT integration. These advantages range from automating highly time-consuming processes to the availability of back-up information extremely useful for service suppliers: for example, a factoring company can, through the B2B application, check that the invoices submitted by a supplier have been approved by the customer. The project partners have estimated that, by using this system, service suppliers will obtain operating advantages allowing the cost of services to be reduced. The FLUID-WIN project partners have also come up with an acronym to refer to this new service supply system: B2(B2B), meaning that (logistical and financial) business services are no longer supplied to individual enterprises but to networks of enterprises, interconnected via B2B applications. In addition to Joinet, the project research partners are: - the prestigious IPK institute (Fraunhofer institute) in Berlin, - Regens, a prominent Hungarian company specialising in software for transport applications, - Acrosslimits: a primary company based in Malta and specialising in banking software - Labein, a Basque company specialising in the dissemination of new technologies. The FLUID-WIN project also involves important industrial partners such as Lombardini Motori of Reggio Emilia, Italy, the Diesel engine manufacturer with a turnover exceeding 200 MLN Euro, attaching great importance to sub-supplying in former East European countries. In January 2008, the first platform prototype will be released to allow different suppliers of financial and logistical services to supply their services according to the B2(B2B) system via specific gateways: one used to acquire information from B2B platforms (B2B gateway), one for logistics and another one for financial services. |
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