IBM Multi-Enterprise Relationship Management

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1 IBM Multi-Enterprise Relationship Management Transform your B2B community with faster, simpler onboarding, management and collaboration Contents 1 From chaos to control in B2B management 2 The rising challenges in trading partner networks 4 IBM MRM: A modern system of engagement 5 Faster onboarding and activity management 5 Internal and trading partner self-service 6 Ongoing activity monitoring and control 7 A roadmap to B2B community value From chaos to control in B2B management In today s global business-to-business (B2B) landscape, companies depend on vast networks of suppliers, customers and partners to run their businesses. How well they manage those engagements from selecting the right trading partners to collaborating with those organizations directly influences revenue growth and profit margin. As the global and digital nature of business intensified over the past few decades, companies took the most expedient tactical route to establishing the connections they needed with trading partners. Without a centralized, unified infrastructure for establishing these ecosystems, companies have had no choice but to manually orchestrate multiple systems, tools and networks, resulting in a heavy reliance on resource-intensive manual processes. The mixture of disparate systems and processes typically gets the job done, but it s disjointed, cumbersome and constraining. It slows time to revenue, limits opportunities for growth and drives up personnel costs. To gain competitive advantage through B2B communities, sponsor organizations need a centralized point of control to manage and monitor onboarding, as well as ongoing interactions with their community. With the right approach and technology, companies can move from chaos to control in B2B management, unleashing innovation and turning B2B communities from cost centers into catalysts for bottom-line growth.

2 The rising challenges in trading partner networks B2B communities are essential for the modern business. In a survey for IBM by the research consultancy Vanson Bourne, 81 percent of business managers rated B2B integration as either strategic to the business or important for selected processes. 1 Trading partners increasingly expect electronic automation, and sponsor organizations that labor ahead with uncoordinated manual processes stand to incur high costs and jeopardize market share. To meet the demand, many organizations have invested heavily to improve their capacity for B2B onboarding and management. Yet strategic business users continue to struggle with B2B integration interfaces and processes, as well as the complexity of multiple back-end applications, including enterprise resource planning (ERP), procurement, managed file transfer, asset management, and more. In a survey by Vanson Bourne, IT professionals said that they expect the impact of cloud, big data, mobile and social on B2B integration requirements to be significant, with cloud-based systems having the greatest effect (See Figure 1). New requirements on top of fragmented processes are exacerbating the challenges that organizations have traditionally faced in working effectively with trading partners: Cloud 62% Big data Mobile Impact on B2B integration 43% 40% Now, emerging systems based around cloud, big data, mobile, and social technologies are introducing new variables into the equation. These four converging dynamics present abundant opportunities to improve value chain performance, yet they also create additional complexity for both line of business and IT leaders. Social No impact from any of the above 4% 39% Figure 1: Impact of cloud, big data, mobile and social on B2B integration requirements. Source: IBM survey of IT professionals by Vanson Bourne. 2 2

3 Onboarding new trading partners is manual and expensive. It involves many touch points and significant labor expense that directly impacts the bottom line. Every day that a member of the community is not up and running is another day that a part of the value chain is not generating revenue. At organizations with hundreds or thousands of partners in the onboarding queue, these issues can be particularly severe. Organizations lack a centralized management mechanism. Getting a holistic view of operational performance and risk levels across the B2B community is often painful and time-consuming. In addition, by the time needed information is manually gathered and presented to management, it is often already out of date. Businesses miss opportunities for collaboration and innovation. Since interactions are cumbersome and expensive, many organizations keep the number of interactions to a minimum. B2B communities have great potential for exchanging ideas on collaboration, innovation and efficiencies, yet for the vast majority of organizations, the potential is untapped. Risk management is compromised. Particularly in supplier communities, the ability to conduct risk assessments based on timely and accurate risk profiles is critical to avoiding interruptions because of financial, quality, labor, political, and natural conditions. Without a clear view of supplier risk, organizations face the prospect of disruptions that can damage profitability and brand image while forcing costly contingency measures. For many years, IBM has innovated and helped global organizations simplify B2B processes through an increase in the speed and effectiveness of value chain management. IBM is building on that success with the introduction of IBM Multi-Enterprise Relationship Management (MRM), a new cloud-based solution that enables enterprises to transform global B2B engagement by accelerating processes, controlling information and leveraging relationships. IBM Multi-Enterprise Relationship Management Benefits Accelerate Faster time to revenue Quicker resolution Control Enforcement of process and compliance standards Centralized ecosystem establishment Leverage Nurture and transform relationships in your partner community Enable and promote self service engagement Transform and continuously optimize global B2B engagement Figure 2: IBM MRM supplies capabilities to streamline and accelerate global B2B engagement. 3

4 IBM MRM: A modern system of engagement As the world has grown more global and digital, leading enterprises no longer think in terms of the traditional systems of record they ve utilized for years. Today, we see a heightened focus on collaboration and tighter, more transparent relationships with trading partners. The increased emphasis on systems of engagement versus systems of record is aimed at generating value from end to end for the sponsor organization, the trading partner and ultimately the end customer. Three key focus areas for IBM MRM are faster onboarding and activity management, internal and trading partner self-service, and ongoing activity monitoring and control. MRM key capabilities Business user self-service for sponsors and partners Secure role-based permissions and activities Portal for sponsor/partner interactions Collaborative activity framework and built-in tasks Dashboard and reporting on key metrics Instant alerting to problem areas APIs for integration with internal/external applications Figure 3. IBM MRM supplies a complete platform for enterprise partner engagement. IBM Multi-Enterprise Relationship Management is a system of engagement that enables sponsor organizations to connect with their B2B communities in easier, faster and more streamlined ways. As an open, customizable and extensible engagement hub that replaces chaos with order and control, IBM MRM is engineered to help improve operational performance and reduce risk while accelerating time to revenue. 4

5 Faster onboarding and activity management Onboarding a new supplier, customer or partner is the first obstacle to effective B2B integration, and it s also one of the most painful for many organizations. More than 70 percent of business managers report that IT either struggles to support the volume of trading partners their organizations need to onboard, or cannot support trading partners technical onboarding requirements, according to an IBM study. 3 IBM MRM gives business users new capabilities to onboard and provision large numbers of trading partners at once, or in one-off fashion as needed. Workflow-driven processes reduce manual steps, errors and delays for both sponsors and partners, helping build a foundation for a positive relationship. Self-service for business users helps streamline the full onboarding lifecycle: Activity creation. A simple drag-and-drop interface enables business users in the sponsor organization to detail exactly what data is required, with specific workflow steps and approval checkpoints defined. Target group definition and rollout. Custom attributes enable pinpoint targeting of specific subsets of the community for each campaign; with a few clicks, notification is sent out to the targeted group within the B2B community. Video: Activity creation and customation Figure 3: View a walk-through of creating and customizing activities such as onboarding. Watch video at Video: Activity rollout Figure 4: View an activity being rolled out to a group of partners. Supplier/customer/partner response. Once notification is received, trading partners provide data as outlined within MRM and submit the information back to the sponsor organization. Activity completion and approval. Assuming all information has been provided as requested by members of the targeted group, the activity can be marked as approved and closed. Internal and trading partner self-service While every organization has similar pains around onboarding and interacting with their B2B community, the exact steps and approvals they want to execute will vary. It s important that these steps can be crafted, tuned and executed by business users. MRM addresses this challenge with a business user self-service model. All tasks can be easily created and connected in a series of steps with simple drag-and-drop actions. For instance, business users at the sponsor organization can create the dialogs that B2B community members will see. They can direct the look and feel, presenting exactly what information is requested, and the timeline or due dates for completing the information. They can customize the partner-facing interface using their logo and other design elements for a customized, branded experience. 5

6 With deadlines and input required of trading partners, automated alerts allow sponsor organizations to drive higher engagement levels and help cultivate active participants in a dynamic B2B community. Ongoing activity monitoring and control For the sponsor organization, MRM provides a centralized monitoring dashboard showing progress across activities typically multiple campaigns in parallel targeting hundreds if not thousands of members of the B2B community. At a glance, the sponsor organization can see which activities are completed and which are still outstanding, gaining the real-time visibility needed to maximize payback from the B2B community. Figure 5. A drag-and-drop activity design interface in IBM MRM empowers business users to have complete control over B2B community interactions. For suppliers, customers and partners, IBM MRM delivers web-enabled self-service to manage account details and their participation in the B2B community. The ability for trading partners to view and manage information on demand supports more intimate interactions with the sponsor organization and helps meet rising expectations for self-service and visibility that B2B users enjoy with leading consumer e-commerce sites. It s then easy to drill down into specific campaigns to understand and address any problem areas. Business users can also segment trading partners by such attributes as geography, revenue contribution, uniqueness of offering, and more. Reporting enables rapid answers to such questions as how many partners have responded to the latest campaign or how many are not compliant with certificate requirements, while automated alerts highlight areas needing attention. Meanwhile, the ability to reuse activities and groups once they have been defined can help sponsor organizations dramatically improve efficiency. Without the need to recreate activities from the beginning, sponsors eliminate the status quo of labor-intensive manual involvement for such common tasks as validating trading partner security and compliance. As many activities in B2B communities are recurring, MRM is designed to support that model in the most efficient way possible. 6

7 In addition, IBM MRM enables the creation of groups representing specific subsets of a B2B community by such criteria as geographic location or revenue size. Groups and their defining criteria are fully customizable, enabling sponsors to build communities with common interests or reach out to specific members with offers, surveys and other messages. A roadmap to move from B2B chaos to community value With open standards-based APIs, MRM is designed for integration with the systems of record in which sponsor organizations store critical data on trading partners. Bi-directional data exchange helps ensure that information is in sync between back-end applications and MRM to minimize manual work and delays, while providing timely and accurate information on trading partner networks. IBM will deliver prebuilt integrations between MRM and IBM Sterling and IBM Emptoris solutions for B2B integration and procurement, respectively, helping to further automate onboarding processes and accelerate time to value. Additional functionality will enable sponsor organizations to offer new communications and collaboration capabilities to trading partners. Suppliers, for instance, will be provided with tools to communicate with the broader supplier community, in the form of a social interactions hub. Customizability and extensibility are key characteristics in IBM MRM that enable organizations to design and direct the interaction experience for trading partners. Figure 6. A centralized monitoring dashboard shows the status of activities at any given time. Video: MRM activity monitoring With IBM MRM offering a faster, simpler approach to B2B community management, sponsor organizations can move from the chaos that prevails in many B2B environments toward a system of engagement that pays dividends across the value chain. Such capabilities will be an important differentiator for success, today and for years to come. Figure 7. See how MRM enables business users to monitor activities. View video at 7

8 Copyright IBM Corporation 2014 IBM Corporation Software Group Route 100 Somers, NY Produced in the United States of America August 2014 IBM, the IBM logo,, Emptoris and ibm.com are trademarks of International Business Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at Copyright and trademark information at This document is current as of the initial date of publication and may be changed by IBM at any time. Not all offerings are available in every country in which IBM operates. THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED AS IS WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANT- ABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND ANY WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF NON-INFRINGEMENT. IBM products are warranted according to the terms and conditions of the agreements under which they are provided. 1 IBM, Bridging the business/it divide in B2B integration, May IBM, Rethinking B2B integration for cloud, big data, mobile and social, May IBM, Bridging the business/it divide in B2B integration, May Please Recycle ZZW03315-USEN-00