Tangentia is proud to be a globally compliant ISO 9001 and 27001 company. All our 3 major entities – Tangentia Inc based in Canada, Tangentia India Pvt Ltd based in India, and Tangentia America LLC have been ISO 9001:2015 and ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certified. Assessment for both the certifications jointly was done by TUV Nord, accredited by German accreditation body DAkkS. Through an integrated approach, our global ISO implementation team has achieved compliance with both standards in record turnaround time. Our Integrated Management System(IMS), which is compliant with both the standards, boasts robust processes that ensure that our products and services meet the needs of our clients, with an ability to effectively manage information security risks. Vijay Thomas, CEO of Tangentia said “It is an inordinate achievement that reveals our commitment to providing quality products and services, ensuring continuous up-gradation of and adherence of information security processes to all our existing and prospective clients." Vaishali Amonker, Global Head of Quality as well as the lead for the Tangentia ISO implementation adds “Our goal to attempt to get the ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 standards simultaneously was a BHAG( Big Hairy Audacious Goal) to start with. However the ISO team made up of people globally that met at all odd hours of the day and night to manage time zones, managed to pull it off and our customers can now rest assured that the Tangentia services that they trust, are going to get even better" To become ISO 9001:2015 certified, Tangentia underwent an evaluation process that included: quality management system development, a management system documentation review, pre-audit, initial assessment, and clearance of non-conformances, all of which work to identify corrective actions that eliminate non-conformances in the quality management standard. The audit also revealed that our internal document and record management system is well developed. It is an inordinate achievement that shows we are truly endowed in understanding our client’s needs in working with them to deliver high-quality solutions, while always complying with regulations and specifications and continuously reviewing and improving the way we work. This certification reveals our commitment to providing quality products and services to all our existing and prospective customers. The ISO 9001 certification clearly demonstrates that we have robust and defined procedures in place in all our business areas. So, we can proudly state that Tangentia services are delivered with quality and transparency. At Tangentia, we adhere to the highest standards of information security, client confidentiality, and trust. We acknowledge the fact that every client’s information/data/documents is an extremely important asset and always treat it with the greatest integrity. ISO/IEC 27001:2013 includes the management of information security in processes related to Information Technology, Client Servicing, Operations, Human Resources, and Administration. Crimson Interactive’s ISMS follows the approach to “develop, establish, implement, operate, monitor, review, maintain, and improve,” thereby ensuring continuous up-gradation of and adherence to information security processes. We at Tangentia give utmost importance to quality and information security while engaging in all business activities. And the ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certification clearly demonstrates that we guarantee information security by adhering to internationally renowned standards.
Tangentia is a Platinum Partner of IBM and well as partners with Automation Anywhere, UI Path, Blue Prism, Adobe, Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon and leading enterprise software vendors. We work with customers globally with offices in Canada and India to implement their RPA strategies using an agile methodology.
Tangentia is ISO 9001:2015 and ISO/IEC 27001:2013 Certified
ISO 9001:2015, the Quality Management Standard
ISO/IEC 27001:2013, the International Information Security Standard
How do our clients benefit from ISO 9001:2015 and ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certification?
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Category: B2B
Ebook – How Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) Is Evolving — and What That Means for You
Case Study : Rollover Pet Food + EDI
Using RPA to Expand B2B Automation Beyond EDI
Using RPA to Expand B2B Automation Beyond EDI
The Tangentia EDI Gateway is a platform that seamlessly integrates with multiple business systems to enable small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and large enterprises to attain full compliance with the EDI requirements of their trading partners, whether they are on the front end or the back end.
The Tangentia Gateway provides a range of state-of-the-art features, such as EDI connectivity to over 2,000 trading partners globally, full integration with eCommerce platforms and ERP/WMS/Carrier systems, support for multiple EDI standards, and support for multiple configurable user accounts.
However, automation can do so much more. It is vital to any business, large or small, to expand beyond their EDI to get the most out of automation. Tangentia makes this possible by providing an RPA platform to expand your order-to-cash and procure-to-pay systems.
Expanding the Order-to-Cash System
The current order-to-cash system involves the supplier organization sending the buying organization an invoice once they have received the purchase order. In this way, 20% of your EDI customers account for 60% to 80% of your transactions. But what about the other 80% of your customers that account for 20% to 40% of your transactions? These customers are small businesses that lie outside of your EDI and that means you are stuck manually processing their transactions.
This is where robotic process automation (RPA) comes in. RPA has the power to automate transactions with customers outside of your EDI. This includes transactions made via email, fax, PDF, and paper, making it possible for you to automate 100% of the transactions you have with your customers.
The benefits of automating order-to-cash are clear. They include:
- Onboarding smaller customers that do not have EDI capabilities
- Reducing back-office staff by as much as 90%
- Increasing the speed of payments
- Improving cashflow
- Reducing costs and increasing performance by as much as 83%
- Improving customer service
Expanding the Procure-to-Pay System
The procure-to-pay system from the side of the buying organization operates in a similar fashion. In this situation, it is still 20% of the EDI vendors accounting for 60% to 80% of the transactions, with smaller businesses operating manually via email, fax, PDF, and paper. Even vendors such as communications suppliers and cleaning companies send invoices manually.
Again, RPA can automate the procure-to-pay process, onboarding those vendors that do not operate via an EDI. Manual transactions can be processed through the RPA platform in a similar manner to order-to-cash transactions. The benefits of this include:
- Reducing invoicing costs of up to 80%
- Reducing invoice processing time from days to minutes
- Increasing data capture for improved decision making
- Improving procure-to-pay efficiency and vendor relationships
Which Bot Type is Right For Your Business?
RPA relies on software bots that are capable of accessing and pulling data from databases, forms, purchase orders, invoices, and other sources of data and information. For example, a bot can read through an invoice, access the required information, fill out forms when required, and will learn the first time it goes through this process. The next time the bot encounters a similar invoice, it will know precisely what to do.
Tangentia Intelligent Automation (TiA) is Tangentia’s bot platform. TiA bots are capable of performing tedious, repetitive tasks and processes that are not the best use of human time, and they do it faster and without human error. An example is the TiA bot that deals with purchase orders and invoices. This bot will:
- Open the purchase order attachment in the email
- Scan the purchase order
- Pull the required information from the purchase order
- Input the information into the proper fields of an Excel file
- Create and fill in all the details of the sales order
- Create and automatically send the invoice to the customer
One purchase order could take as long as 10 minutes to process when it is done manually. However, the bot can process four purchase orders in less than 30 seconds. This is a win, especially for time-sensitive purchase orders. It can take less than four hours from the receipt of a purchase order to dispatch.
Expand Your EDI Capability with RPA
The turmoil of today’s global environment, which is largely driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, has increased the need for automation. However, EDI is limited to partners who also have an EDI system. RPA can expand your automation capabilities to include partners who do not have EDI capabilities. In fact, close to 50% of businesses worldwide will increase RPA adoption simply due to COVID-19, with the following goals:
- Open the purchase order attachment in the email
- Increasing agility, resilience, and diversity in supply chain operations
- Dealing with increased cost pressures through the automation of back-office processes and operational tasks
- Supporting remote workforces
It’s time to start thinking about expanding your automation. If you are interested in learning more about what RPA can do for your order-to-cash and procure-to-pay systems, reach out and speak with a Tangentia team member today. We’re looking forward to hearing from you!
Expand Your B2B Automation Beyond EDI Using RPA. Watch our 45 min On-Demand webinar where you will learn how RPA & EDI can extend your automation capabilities.
Expand Your B2B Automation Beyond EDI Using RPA
Watch our 45 min On Demand webinar where you will learn how RPA & EDI can extend your automation capabilities
ArcESB Case Study
Tangentia Case Study
Tangentia managed services for successful ArcESB migration
Since 2003, Tangentia has been a leading provider of digital transformation solutions to companies of all sizes, implementing wide-scale automation, B2B, and digital integration solutions. Among their solutions, Tangentia provides end-to-end EDI integration services, spanning B2B/EDI document exchange as well as backend ERP, WMS, Carrier System, and database integration.
With 15+ years of digital transformation experience under their belt, Tangentia has helped companies automate supply chains and streamline business activity to boost productivity, efficiency, accuracy, reliability, and security.
The Challenge:
Upgrade internal legacy technology to solve internal pain points, reduce complexities and provide customers with a more agile Tangentia Gateway SaaS cloud solution
For years, Tangentia has used IBM’s Sterling B2B Integrator to implement end-to-end integrations for clients, processing up to 2,000,000 EDI transactions per month. However, they discovered that Sterling B2B Integrator in some use cases restricted the breadth of the solutions they could offer to clients. Some of the limitations included:
- Limited error logging meant Tangentia required a dedicated team to exclusively monitor transactions, making it resource-intensive to operate & maintain.
- The lack of a REST API limited Tangentia’s integration flexibility and management efficiency.
- Limited workflow capabilities forced Tangentia to develop custom C# and Python scripts to handle EDI processes.
- Complex user interface making it time-consuming to set up new maps/connections and troubleshoot EDI issues
Tangentia decided to search for a solution that matched the processing power and scalability of Sterling while also addressing their existing pain points and providing more expansive opportunities for integrating with 3rd-party applications. Most importantly, their desired solution needed a tool that could accelerate the process of migrating away from Sterling to keep the transition overhead low.
The Solution:
ArcESB and the Maps Import Wizard
As a global digital transformation solutions provider with a widespread clientele amongst hundreds of companies, Tangentia required a sophisticated solution with the following features:
- Robust managed file transfer capabilities with Drummond-Certified AS2, SFTP Server, and other file transfer protocol support
- Automatic EDI translation for ANSI X12 and EDIFACT files
- Reliable ERP, CRM, and RDBMS connectivity from within the user interface
- API functionality to issue REST and SOAP requests
- Detailed logging & error identification processes
- Scalability to handle high-volume transactions
- Intuitive EDI mapping features and time-saving UI
- Reliable and responsive support
In ArcESB, Tangentia found a solution that exceeded their expectations for an enterprise integration platform. Not only did ArcESB meet their requirements, but it also alleviated many of the pain points that had limited their management efficiency:
“ArcESB supports web services that allow us to directly interact with databases which used to be our major limitation with IBM Sterling” said Rushabh Dharwadkar, B2B Technical Lead, Tangentia. “Another ArcESB feature that we highly value is its extensive error logging. We used to dedicate a team of seven people just for error monitoring and monitoring transactions previously.”
Seeking to avoid a costly transition period, Tangentia leveraged the ArcESB Maps Import Wizard to begin their quick and automatic migration process:
“We were able to reduce the number of maps we use throughout our projects by more than 50%. That was extremely beneficial, as it translated to fewer errors, and even easier error identification, which was a considerable sticking point for us on our old platform.”
The Results:
11 Migrations in 4 Months
At the time of writing, Tangentia has implemented ArcESB for 11 of their clients over a duration of four months — easily outpacing their expected timelines.
“Typically, our IBM Sterling implementations take four to five months, which is a major challenge for a lot of our customers who need to be EDI compliant as soon as possible. With ArcESB, we were able to migrate all 11 existing projects in just about four months, and new clients take less than two months to onboard,” Dharwadkar said.
ArcESB has also boosted Tangentia’s bottom line by automating error monitoring, allowing their engineers to focus on value-added digital transformation projects.
Perhaps most importantly, ArcESB has enabled Tangentia to offer end-to-end EDI integrations on a unified platform — while cutting EDI costs for their customers and passing on the savings. ArcESB’s affordable unlimited EDI license enabled unlimited EDI processing at a fraction of the cost.
Moving Forward: A Growing Partnership between Tangentia and ArcESB
Tangentia Gateway SaaS Portal powered by ArcESB
Tangentia and ArcESB both look to embrace the momentum and substantially set up more clients on their latest ArcESB powered Tangentia Gateway. The push towards streamlining their EDI management enhances Tangentia's ability to continue providing market-leading digital transformation solutions. Nonesuch offerings are more exciting than the new improved Generation 3 Tangentia Gateway SaaS Cloud EDI offering
“Tangentia Gateway in its latest Gen 3 release allows business users at their organization as well as their vendors and their customers to easily interact with their EDI documents without the need for specialized EDI skills. We’re now processing more than 2,000,000 files per month and continue to scale as we add customers globally” says Karen Briones, Customers Success Manager at Tangentia”
ArcESB stand-alone EDI solution configured, managed, and hosted by Tangentia
Tangentia not only uses ArcESB in their Tangentia Gateway SaaS Cloud offering but offers to resell, consulting, migration, and managed services offering for ArcESB to customers that manage their own EDI infrastructure internally.
One of Canada’s favorite ice cream manufacturers recently moved their EDI to ArcESB solution which was migrated and managed entirely by the Tangentia EDI team. The Tangentia EDI consulting team can migrate your existing EDI maps and connections from any legacy platform to ArcESB, and can be entirely managed or hosted by Tangentia.
If you’re looking for an affordable, scalable, and easy to implement EDI solution, contact Tangentia and experience the difference that a customer-focused Canadian-based team can provide. Contact:
North America
Karen Briones
EDI Customer Success Manager at Tangentia North America
kbriones@tangentia.com
Global
Rajhans Gupta
Enterprise Account Manager at Tangentia India
rgupta@tangentia.com
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Tangentia is a Platinum Partner of IBM and well as partners with Automation Anywhere, UI Path, Blue Prism, Adobe, Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon and leading enterprise software vendors. We work with customers globally with offices in Canada and India to implement their RPA strategies using an agile methodology.
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How Cloud EDI Can Transform Business Invoice Reconciliation
How Cloud EDI Can Transform Business Invoice Reconciliation
It’s no secret that automation is a hot topic right now in virtually every industry. The ability to use software to save employee hours and costs and defer that burden to a machine that can process tasks in a fraction of a second is essential for any business with low-profit margins, like the restaurant industry.
After all, every task is critical, and every second counts when your employees are on the clock. And when it comes to finance processes like invoice reconciliation, EDI and automation are rapidly changing the way companies approach these tasks.
This article will explore EDI and invoice reconciliation, and how adding EDI can benefit your business over the long run.
How Automated Invoice Reconciliation Can Benefit Your Company
Any process that a human can do, a machine can do faster and more efficiently, even tasks vital to a business’s profitability, like invoice reconciliation. It is essential to reconcile your invoices as accurately as possible. Doing so will reap the following benefits for your company:
- Saving work hours. Pre-automation, businesses will assign multiple employees to sift through invoices for hours at a time. With automation, these same employees can be contributing to other tasks, while EDI software reconciles the invoices for them.
- Reduce invoice errors. People make errors all the time, even best our best intentions. Invoice errors can profoundly negatively impact a business, from overpaying/underpaying a supplier to not billing a client correctly. The software will not make these same mistakes as all values are based on computer calculations and checks and balances are in place.
- Reconcile many invoices simultaneously. Humans can only process one invoice at a time. The software can process invoices in a fraction of a second. By reconciling many invoices quickly, you will save valuable employee hours.
- Prioritize other more critical business processes. By automating invoice reconciliation, you can re-assign your human employees to other tasks. Every task needs to be prioritized for maximum efficiency to ensure maximum profits.
- Establishes precedence for more automation. Automation saves money, especially when a whole business process can be automated, as in the case of EDI.
- Cloud-stored data. Even the best office practices of data storage are no match for cloud-based storage. Cloud data can be accessed at any time, in any location, as long as you have online or offline access to your data. The same cannot be stated for data locked in an office. By utilizing cloud storage, EDI allows you to save copies of reconciled invoices, and check the reconciliation process for errors when you need to.
The Value of EDI and Invoice Reconciliation
Companies are using automated invoice reconciliation to scale up their business processes, especially in centralized billing. If you own or operate several establishments, you will need to process invoices from multiple locations quickly and efficiently. EDI allows you to do this, even if your various locations are being run independently by different managers.
By using EDI and automating the manual collection of data, you can reduce processing errors and increase efficiency when reconciling invoices. Messy handwriting, wrong inputs, and scanning issues are no longer a problem. You can enter all the pertinent information into a terminal, generate an invoice electronically, and send a copy to a centralized office for automated reconciliation.
Automated EDI is one form of IT management that is transforming business infrastructure and processes. Automation reduces complexity and increases efficiencies that can affect whole work teams, replacing manual, error-prone processes, and saving many more useful employee hours spent on other tasks.
Seamless EDI and Business Automation Starts With Tangentia
How is your company leveraging powerful cloud EDI functionality and automation to transform your invoice reconciliation processes?
Tangentia provides digital solutions for businesses of all sizes. If you’re looking to kickstart your automation journey, we can help. Get in touch with one of our EDI specialists today to get started.
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Tangentia is a Platinum Partner of IBM and well as partners with Automation Anywhere, UI Path, Blue Prism, Adobe, Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon and leading enterprise software vendors. We work with customers globally with offices in Canada and India to implement their RPA strategies using an agile methodology.
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A Quick Guide to Warehouse Inventory Management in 2020
A Quick Guide to Warehouse Inventory Management in 2020
The holidays are fast approaching, and that means retailers and wholesalers must be efficient in organizing their products and managing the inventory of their products.
Depending on the size of your operation, how you manage your products may differ. However, warehouse inventory management is not just a requirement for compliance with SEC regulations and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) for public companies—it’s crucial to the success of any retail company.
We’ve put together this brief guide to help you understand the basics of warehouse inventory management.
What Is Warehouse Inventory Management?
Warehouse inventory management is the system used to organize and track all of the company’s owned products. For warehouse operations, this helps to ensure the right level of inventory is in the right place at the right time. Inventory is then converted to revenue once it’s sold.
In the United States, manufacturers, retailers, and merchant wholesalers carried more than $1.9 trillion in inventory in June 2018, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Accurately evaluating the inventory for the company’s balance sheet requires either physical stock count or an automated inventory system that creates an accurate record of each inventory-related transaction.
This quantitative product management differs slightly from a company’s warehouse management system (WMS), an umbrella term that supports the entire operation of a warehouse, including inventory management.
The best warehouse inventory management systems keep track of products and provide actionable business intelligence, such as identifying trends in product performance and sending reorder notifications when stock is low.
Current warehouse inventory management systems are outdated and often haven’t embraced everything automation has to offer.
Features of Inventory Management
There are many steps involved in warehouse inventory management, some of which include:
- Picking and packing
- Shipping
- Managing locations
- Receiving orders
- Tracking inventory levels
- Cycle counting
- Generating reports
- Providing business insights
What Are the Different Types of Inventory Management?
Manual
Every step of the delivery, tracking, loading, and data manipulation is done by workers. This manual system can increase the risk of human error at any point in the inventory management process. If there is ever a mistake, the only method of resolving the problem is another manual re-do.
Another downside to this type of inventory management is its unsustainability for more significant warehouse operations. Without computerized report generation, companies may see difficulties in turning paper-based information into useful data.
Barcode
This system uses the familiar label of black stripes that are affixed to the product, packaging, or pallet. Using wearable barcode readers, workers can speed up warehouse inventory management and save seconds scanning per item. This digital format is efficient and accurate by counting goods in real-time.
RFID
Radiofrequency identification tags are found in two configurations: active and passive. Active systems use battery-operated tag readers located throughout a warehouse and updates of inventory count and location. Passive systems are read-only when someone activates the readers through hand-held devices. Passive technology can be read at up to 40 feet, while active readers are effective up to 300 feet, but both systems automatically record inventory.
Warehouse Robots
With growing advancements in technology and automation, companies are starting to turn to optical systems mounted on the ground or aerial platforms. These systems use machine learning to read existing labels without barcodes or RFID and maintain accurate, up-to-date inventory.
Warehouse Inventory Automation: Is This the New Norm?
Modern supply chains are more complex than ever. Traditional manual processes are no longer viable for businesses that want to optimize workflows and reduce wasted resources.
Automation is the natural solution to these problems. It’s ideal for individual warehouses or companies that support numerous locations across the entire supply chain.
Effective fulfillment requires sophisticated solutions that are able to predict trends, make actionable recommendations, and increase the visibility of potential issues before they turn into larger problems.
Successful manufacturers, 3PLs, and retailers know the importance of optimized supply chains. That’s why they’ve heavily invested in cloud-based automation solutions for their supply chains.
Automate Your Warehouse Inventory Management With Tangentia
Here at Tangentia, we understand the transformative difference automated solutions can make for your business.
When you’re processing hundreds or thousands of pallets or cartons per day, automated processes can significantly save time, effort, and costs. For many retail companies, creating greater warehouse inventory management efficiency translates to a multi-million dollar impact.
Are you interested in learning more about warehouse inventory management automation? Get in touch with Tangentia today to learn more.
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Tangentia is a Platinum Partner of IBM and well as partners with Automation Anywhere, UI Path, Blue Prism, Adobe, Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon and leading enterprise software vendors. We work with customers globally with offices in Canada and India to implement their RPA strategies using an agile methodology.
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5 Ways to Prepare for the Holiday Season in the Age of the New Norm
5 Ways to Prepare for the Holiday Season in the Age of the New Norm
The world’s a much different place than it was over eight months ago. Supply chains continue to be tested, manufacturing is still playing catch up, and digital transformations are no longer a luxury—they’re essential. Businesses in all industries find themselves at a crossroads: embrace digital technologies or die.
And with the 2020 holiday season fast approaching, it’s no secret that this will be a holiday season unlike anything we’ve ever seen.
But what can you do to prepare? And how can you ensure your business is ready to capitalize on this new norm?
1. Expand Your Ecommerce Capabilities
The best way to protect your business is to expand your ecommerce capabilities. We are living in a new world, and that means a holiday season full of unknowns.
The days of selling your products through a single channel are gone. Successful ecommerce sellers and brands are already focusing on a multi-channel approach.
But what does this mean? Your company needs to explore all avenues—whether that’s selling through brick and mortar retailers, Amazon, dropshipping, or something else. Choice is king today, and you need to give your customers the luxury of choice.
The new push for digital has made this easier than ever. You can easily configure your existing systems to meet the trading requirements of new channels, ensure your products are properly specked, and ready for shipment come the holiday season.
But don’t wait too long. You need to get accepted and onboarded in the system before it’s too late.
2. Ensure Your EDI System Is Up to Speed
You rely on your cloud EDI system to do a lot of the heavy lifting for your business. It keeps you compliant with your trading partner’s requirements, streamlines and automates workflows, and ensures your data is compatible and standardized.
You need to act quickly before the busy holiday season, and that means having an integrated EDI system that keeps up with changing demand.
Take the time now to assess your current EDI system to see whether it’s meeting your needs, can cope with increasing holiday demand, and future shopping trends in the ever-evolving world of ecommerce.
3. Optimize Your Inventory NOW
You need to start optimizing your inventory immediately to avoid getting blindsided when the holiday season hits.
Remember, your retail trading partners are overworked, short-staffed, and struggling to cope with increasing demand.
Take the time to optimize your inventory. Look at what items are low in stock (or at risk of going out of stock). Go the extra mile and tell retailers what products they should restock based on your sell-through and inventory data.
4. Be Wary of New Retail Relationships
Many businesses have forged new relationships with retailers that were more prepared for this new digital-first world.
But keep in mind, these new relationships are still an unknown. It’s important to protect your business by diversifying and not over-relying on any single new retailer too much.
Make sure you communicate with your trading partners at all times, so you can meet their trading requirements, fill orders, and work through hiccups as they occur.
5. Be Prepared for the Unknown
Experts will try and predict this holiday season—but the truth is? We don’t know what’s going to happen. This is uncharted territory in the digital age.
Will consumers flock to brick and mortar stores, malls, and other popular holiday locations? Or will they go all-in with digital?
The best thing you can do is to prepare for these trends. Here’s what we recommend:
- Ensure you have enough merchandise to restock retailers should they sell through initial orders
- Have a stock replenishment plan in place with your retailers
- Develop a rock-solid fulfillment strategy that leverages a powerful fully integrated EDI system, sets expectations with retailers, and keeps shipments on time and on budget.
Need Help Preparing for the 2020 Holiday Season? Tangentia Can Help
The 2020 holiday season promises to be an exciting one, for one reason or another. Here at Tangentia, we’ve been helping our clients optimize their cloud EDI systems in preparation.
Are you looking to do more with your EDI system? Get in touch with our EDI specialists to see how you can leverage enhanced functionality, automation, and more to improve your workflows.
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Tangentia is a Platinum Partner of IBM and well as partners with Automation Anywhere, UI Path, Blue Prism, Adobe, Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon and leading enterprise software vendors. We work with customers globally with offices in Canada and India to implement their RPA strategies using an agile methodology.
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How Just-In-Time Inventory, EDI, and RPA Keep Your Business at Its Most Efficient
Automating Your Inventory : How Just-In-Time Inventory, EDI, and RPA Keep Your Business at Its Most Efficient
When it comes to your company’s supply chain, one of the most common weak links is inventory management. There are very few businesses that handle their inventory management well. Typically, retail businesses face problems scaling up their inventory management systems as they grow.
As your business grows, efficient inventory practices become more and more worth investing in. Retail companies with poor inventory management can suffer from stock issues, slowed turnover times, and needing to order excess inventory to prevent running out of stock. Slow delivery and stock issues are a sure way to reduce customer satisfaction, so keeping these issues at a minimum is important.
How can retail companies improve their stock management and inventory processes? For most businesses, the answer is automation. Most inventory management issues stem from human error, inefficient practices, and incomplete item information. Automation resolves all these issues. It is intrinsically efficient and requires complete item information, and eliminates human error.
So, how can your business get started with inventory automation? The process isn’t as difficult as you might think. Just-in-Time Inventory (JIT), Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) are a few strategies that you can utilize onto your supply chain to be well on the way to an optimized system.
What Is Just-in-Time (JIT) Inventory?
JIT inventory is a way to decrease waste and increase the efficiency of your supply chain. With JIT, your supply chain only receives goods as they become needed.
Pros of JIT?
JIT keeps your business at maximum efficiency. By having goods on hand only when they’re needed, you can keep your supply chain operating smoothly without needing to worry about long-term storage of stock.
Maintaining JIT inventory reduces the amount of waste your supply chain produces from leftover, unused goods. It also keeps the investment into your supply low, as you don’t need to stock more goods than you need.
Cons of JIT
While JIT keeps your business on top of its efficiency when supply is readily available, it can cause your business to suffer greatly from issues farther down the line of the supply chain.
Since you don’t keep a stockpile of the goods your supply chain uses, if they suddenly become scarce or expensive, your business might unexpectedly run out of stock. You might also end up needing to buy overpriced stock.
What Is Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)?
In general, Electronic Data Interchange is simply the technical term for two computers communicating with each other. In the context of the supply chain, EDI is a way to get a full digital picture of your electronic transaction exchanges with your customers, as well as your inventory.
Pros of EDI
Many supply chain issues, such as inventory shortages and surpluses, happen because of a lack of inventory visibility. EDI allows you to keep track of all your inventory in one centralized location, making it easy to track and prevent inventory errors.
With EDI, it’s also much easier to manage more complex inventory processes, such as multichannel sales. The more complicated the process, the more likely it is for human error to occur.
Having a guarantee that all of the information about your inventory is accurate allows you to make supply decisions with the big picture in mind. Overall, EDI improves almost all aspects of the inventory management process.
Cons of EDI
EDI can be hard to adjust for your supply chain to work around, especially if it is a legacy EDI system that is in place. This is especially the case for rapidly growing businesses, which don’t usually have particularly well-optimized supply chains.
If your inventory isn’t well-suited to EDI, it can take some work to get full value out of the EDI system. You may need to overhaul some of your inventory processes altogether.
What Is Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?
RPA is a way to increase the efficiency of your inventory management by replacing human operators for various digital systems. With an RPA system, the computer essentially uses itself by means of a virtual operator, called an RPA robot.
RPA robots have a wide array of functionalities, and are able to completely replace human users for many applications. They can perform tasks such as moving and collecting data from various sources, as well as process data by performing calculations.
Pros of RPA
RPA can allow for quite a lot of inventory management automation, sometimes up to 90%. In general, processes that can be automated should be, as humans are almost always slower than an RPA robot. RPA robots can drastically increase the efficiency of your inventory management processes.
Like EDI, RPA removes the human element from many processes. In particular, RPA robots can handle data entry, data processing, and other repetitive tasks easily, with a 0% rate of error. This gives them a sizable advantage over humans, who are unable to focus on these tasks for as long.
RPA systems can also keep running overnight, giving them yet another advantage over human operators. Overall, RPA is almost guaranteed to provide a large boost to your business’s supply chain efficiency.
Cons of RPA
Like EDI, a proper RPA system is not trivial to implement. Rolling out an RPA project into your business’s inventory management or production environments actually has a good chance of failing at first. After some troubleshooting, you will likely start getting full value out of the RPA system.
Tying It All Together
Automation is a great way to increase efficiency and eliminate errors within your inventory management process. It can’t do the job on its own, though: if you want to optimize your inventory management, you should use a combination of JIT, EDI, and RPA.
How JIT, EDI, and RPA Complement Each Other
On their own, these three methods of optimizing your inventory are sure to increase your efficiency significantly. When put together, though, they are more than the sum of their parts.
The biggest weakness of JIT is that it’s prone to human error. Improper data entry can result in an unexpected stock outage of your product. EDI and RPA prevent this by removing the capacity for human error in the majority of the inventory management operation.
On the other hand, EDI and RPA can suffer from bottlenecks. It doesn’t matter how efficient your data processing is if your business is bogged down by extra costs relating to storage or other inefficiencies. JIT helps alleviate this bottleneck by increasing the efficiency of your business outside of data processing.
Can I Have JIT or EDI Without RPA?
While JIT, EDI, and RPA are tools that are best used together, they can be used individually to great effect. You should make sure you’re on the lookout for the potential issues with using these tools.
So as long as you build your inventory management process around the tools you’re using—you should be able to work around JIT, EDI, and RPA’s various weaknesses. Overall though, we recommend trying to implement all three inventory management tools, as they work best in tandem.
An Investment in JIT Is an Investment in Efficiency
If your business has been growing and you’re having trouble handling demand for your products, the solution may not be to expand and spend more. Oftentimes, it’s much more budget-friendly and effective to invest in ways to improve your efficiency than expand your flawed, existing system.
When it comes to improving the efficiency of your supply chain, the best way is with automation. JIT, EDI, and RPA are all easy-to-implement forms of automation that are designed to provide you with a quick return on investment. Once you have these systems in place, you’ll find that your inventory management model is much more scalable.
If you’re interested in learning more about JIT, EDI, or RPA, feel free to contact us today to find out how these tools can help your business be the best it can be.
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Tangentia is a Platinum Partner of IBM and well as partners with Automation Anywhere, UI Path, Blue Prism, Adobe, Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon and leading enterprise software vendors. We work with customers globally with offices in Canada and India to implement their RPA strategies using an agile methodology.
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Integrating Your EDI Data Into Your ERP Systems: What Are Your Options?
Integrating Your EDI Data Into Your ERP Systems: What Are Your Options?
By Karen Briones
Everyone’s heard about Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) systems by now. But seamlessly integrating EDI data into an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system is one area where many companies struggle. It’s important that these two systems communicate flawlessly to minimize processing times, eliminate errors, and avoid compliance issues.
Many companies rely on EDI systems that they struggle to maintain as they start to transition into the era of cloud technology. Most of them are legacy EDI systems that have been patched along over the decades, and trying to make them compatible with modern ERP systems is often a challenge.
So, how can you ensure that your EDI data is compatible with your ERP system? Let’s start by assessing the types of problems that most companies face when trying to integrate their EDI data with their ERP.
The Most Common EDI Data Integration Problems
Let’s face it—incorporating your EDI data into your ERP system isn’t an easy task. Here are a few of the most common problems you’ll encounter:
- Poorly-built integrations that aren’t standardized. The entire premise of EDI is built around the idea of standardized file formats. Your organization may have developed a series of internal processes and policies over the years. Each layer of added difficulty only complicates the integration process.
- Handing the project off to an inexperienced team. Every aspect of your integration needs to be managed carefully as a simple error could potentially lead to a halt of the rest of the downstream processes, and worst, compliance issues. Don’t make the mistake of handing the project off to an inexperienced team. The data you send and receive is important to your business, and it’s vital that your vendors and suppliers have access to accurate and compliant data to minimize disruptions to your business processes.
- Relying too heavily on manual processes. Accountability and control are important aspects of EDI—but relying on manual processes can complicate the integration process. It is best practice to automate these processes to ensure that the data that you are integrating is accurate and reliable from end-to-end.
- Deploying too many back-end applications. It’s not uncommon for businesses to use various CRM’s, ERP’s, and other applications to simplify their back-end processes. However, integrating your EDI data into multiple applications can increase the likelihood of costly errors being made.
Every organization is unique, and the challenges you face may be different. Still, your main focus should always be on maintaining the integrity and accessibility of the data that is essential to your business and your customers.
EDI Data and ERP Integration: Your Options
Several options exist when it comes to integrating your EDI data into an ERP system. The most popular options include:
Use a Third-Party EDI Integration Plugin
Some companies use a Third-Party EDI Integration Plugin that acts as a bridge between their EDI and ERP systems. While this may prove successful for your organization, the cost associated with this option is typically high.
Work with a Third Party EDI Service Provider
Third party EDI service providers not only ensure your EDI compliance with your trading partners’ EDI requirements, but they also typically offer ready-to-use integration modules for most ERPs. Many companies rely on Third Party EDI Service Providers to fully manage their overall EDI infrastructure, freeing them from costly in-house management and maintenance of these systems.
Utilize Web Services
The more modern ERP, WMS and eCommerce platforms have started to embrace web services/API integration to allow their applications to seamlessly communicate with other applications. EDI data can be incorporated into your ERP by utilizing APIs.
Implement Flat Files
Flat files are known as text database files. They are the most basic form of EDI data available. This method uses simple text files called flat-files (or CSV) to ensure data is compatible with the majority of ERP systems. Other EDI systems may use the XML format. These two file formats are the global standard in EDI and are highly-integratable with other ERP solutions.
Need Help Choosing the Right Integration Option for Your Company?
Integrating your EDI data into an ERP system is a major process that every organization that handles huge amounts of data should consider. Tangentia specializes in fully integrated EDI solutions, and can help your company successfully build the bridge between your EDI, ERP, WMS, eCommerce and other business applications.
Tangentia has decades of experience working with EDI systems, and we understand exactly what it takes to build an automated system that is flexible, compliant, and functional while being cost-effective.
Get in touch with a member of the Tangentia team today to see how we can automate your EDI data flow between your existing business applications.
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Tangentia is a Platinum Partner of IBM and well as partners with Automation Anywhere, UI Path, Blue Prism, Adobe, Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon and leading enterprise software vendors. We work with customers globally with offices in Canada and India to implement their RPA strategies using an agile methodology.
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