Augmented reality technology continues to “augment” our lives to include use of 4G wireless in law enforcement, augmented reality goggles for warehouse workers, and capability to browse ebooks when in the bookstore. futuregov reports on the Chinese city of Ningbo which is investing almost US$100 million in a 4G wireless network to support the municipality’s emergency services more efficiently and pave the way for “smart law enforcement”. DCVelocity reports on augmented reality goggles for warehouse workers that provide visual directions for order pickers. StorefrontBacktalk reports on Barnes & Noble’s experiment with their Nook ebook reader. While customers are in the physical store they will have the ability to read the full text of any ebooks in the chain’s “more than one million” title electronic library. See links below for details on the latest augmented reality trends in the news.
Chinese city deploys 4G wireless for smart enforcement – just like the movies #augmentedreality http://bit.ly/cVv4yY 20:47 20 May , 2010
Revolutionary goggles show warehouse workers the way #augmentedreality #SCM #WMS http://bit.ly/b7h60M 19:50 17 May , 2010
Barnes & Noble Makes Mobile Device Act Differently While In-Store – browse ebooks in store #wireless #ebook http://bit.ly/dq59Rh 21:10 29 Apr , 2010
Business-To-Business (B2B) eCommerce and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) technologies “creates an environment for an effective and efficient global economy” (Ray Walker). B2B technologies allow for the rapid and economic transmission of business documents. Any business that does not effectively leverage B2B technologies will likely perish in the long run in a global economy. The exchange of paper documents such as purchase orders and invoices are increasingly becoming a non-economical practice.
The Basics of B2B and EDI Technologies. B2B eCommerce is conducted globally usually over the internet, using telecommunications carriers, or dedicated communications lines. B2B eCommerce at its essence is data transfer of business documents that occurs between two computer systems. Each system belongs to each of the businesses in the B2B relationship. See What is B2B eCommerce? for more information of B2B and EDI technologies.
Examples of Where Businesses Can Leverage B2B and EDI technologies.
Below are some examples and ideas where businesses can leverage B2B and EDI technologies.
Supplier eInvoicing. eInvoicing is fairly common between large businesses. The initial EDI enablement costs are low compared to the high transaction volumes. The challenge of eInvoicing comes with exchanging electronic invoices with small suppliers and businesses. See posting, Free B2B Electronic Invoicing For Small Suppliers, as an eInvoicing solution for small suppliers. Also, EDI – a Burden or Strategic Necessity for Suppliers?
Synchronizing B2B Data Streams. With the near-real-time flow of electronic documents such as purchase orders and invoices, there are now more opportunities to synchronize these B2B data streams such as the real-time matching of documents. See posting, Synchronize Data To Leverage New Supply Chain Technology.
One of the challenges with Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Business-to-Business (B2B) is enabling small suppliers to exchange electronic business documents such as invoices and purchase orders. To exchange business documents, either electronically or paper, between small suppliers and large businesses costs a lot for both parties. Every paper invoice or purchase order has a lot of administrative overhead. Enabling a small supplier to exchange electronic documents with a large business is costly in terms of recovering the start-up costs and on-going costs in comparison with the low volume of transactions per supplier enablement.
What if a third-party offered B2B integration for free for small suppliers and businesses?
Potential Solutions for Enabling Small Suppliers to Exchange Electronic Documents.
There are several promising third-party solutions that offer the promise to lower the overall cost of enabling small suppliers to exchange electronic documents. See example third-party solutions below that offer free solutions for small suppliers and businesses and potentially lower costs for large businesses to enable electronic document exchange with small suppliers.
Tradeshift. Danish start-up Tradeshift has launched a free e-invoicing platform for small suppliers and businesses. They feature EDI integration, ERP integration (SAP, Oracle), and open APIs. For their business model, their revenue will come from companies with 250 + employees and government agencies. I would also guess they would have other revenue opportunities as their user base grows.
BillFLO Anoowa, a U.S.-based company offers billFLO an electronic B2B invoice presentation system that interfaces with businesses’ accounting systems for accounts receivables and payables. For sellers (small suppliers and businesses) this solution is free. For buyers they have a 30-day free trial. If buyer receive five or less BillFLO invoices a month, it stays free for both the buyer and the seller. This solution works by the seller using BillFLO to send and track computer readable, electronic invoices from their accounting system to buyers that use BillFLO to receive electronic invoices that are then imported into the buyer’s accounting system.
The Benefits to Large Businesses With Using a Third-Party B2B Integration Solution That is Free for Small Suppliers.
Many large businesses and Governments should be attracted to this type of service offering as they are already directly or indirectly paying for the B2B integration (or lack of it) for small suppliers and businesses. There are many large companies (like Wal-Mart) that give “free”, proprietary B2B integration software to their suppliers. Other large businesses that do not help with enabling their small suppliers are indirectly incurring higher costs by either being burdened by paper-based document exchange or their small suppliers pass their B2B integration costs (either internal IT or 3rd party VANs/service providers) on to their large customers through higher prices.
