Customers want to source goods and equipment rapidly and painlessly. Ideally, they want to seamlessly connect to your systems-accessing online catalogs, transmitting purchase orders, and obtaining real-time order status without leaving their native procurement environment. Companies that respond to this desire differentiate themselves through new levels of responsiveness.
Integrating third-party supplier information into the supply chain is a well-established practice, and many global companies drive higher efficiency by requiring key suppliers to conform to their technical integration preferences. In most cases, batch-oriented EDI messaging has been used to link organizations. Though not very exciting, the technology has been good enough to do the job.
