What is B2B Integration?

In today's technology age, competition in the business sector has gained momentum. We see that companies that successfully adapt to digital transformation stand out in this period. Today, business processes take place in a very different way compared to just 10 years ago. Because in the digital age, there is no longer any tolerance for manual ness and slowness. In this age where automation and efficiency are very important, integrations are critical for companies. In this article, we will talk about B2B integration and the importance and advantages of B2B (business to business) integration.

B2B integration is the automation of business processes and communication between businesses, manufacturers, suppliers, customers and trading partners. B2B integration ensures that the data provided by all business partners involved in a common business process is automatically shared with other business partners. It enables the exchange of electronic data such as invoices, despatch notifications and purchase orders between the systems of different companies. In this way, the data obtained from the business processes are automatically recorded in the companies' ERP and 3rd party systems.

Business-to-business integration facilitates the supply chain processes of businesses, improves cooperation with commercial partners, reduces human errors and automates processes. In short, B2B integration solution is a digital strategy that integrates and automates business processes by integrating large systems and applications of enterprises.

What is B2B Integration Software?

B2B integration software offers the architecture that enables commercial documents to be digitised and quickly routed and sent from a company's trading ecosystem. B2B software is suitable for cloud or on-premises B2B integration use.

What is B2B Integration Platform?

The B2B integration platform enables businesses to integrate their B2B and EDI (electronic data interchange) processes, organizations, and a central gateway. In other words, it centralizes data.

The platform collects data from source systems, converts the data into standardized format and then automatically file transfer to business partners with the appropriate transport protocol.

What is Electronic Data Exchange (EDI)?

EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) can be described as the electronic exchange of business documents (eg orders, waybills and more) in the form of structured data based on international standards. Thus, there is no longer a need for manual intervention, as data can be changed and reprocessed beyond the boundaries of the enterprise, without being bound by any format. The benefits of EDI solutions, such as accurate data processing, reducing commercial disputes, increasing competitiveness by accelerating the process of converting data into information, make significant contributions to company productivity. EDI software provides safe, fast and inexpensive transfer of data.

SAP EDI Consultancy

Types of B2B Integration

B2B integration types can be classified in various ways. But if we want to classify it on a general scale, we can classify it as data-level integration and people-level integration. Let's examine these 2 types of approach to B2B integration now.

Data-Level Integration

Data-level integration is a type of integration that provides automatic document exchange in various business processes. With the integration at the data level, the documents of all these transactions are transferred automatically and digital from order to payment or from tender to invoice. Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) can be considered as an example of data-level integration. Since the information transferred in B2B integration is very critical and private, high-security protocols are the basis of these integrations.

People-Level Integration

People-level integration is defined as end-to-end communication and collaboration between trading partners to run business processes.

The Top B2B Integration Challenges

Key Capabilities of B2B Integration Solution

Successful B2B integration relies on several key components:

Data Exchange Protocols: Standard protocols such as AS2, FTP, HTTP, MQ facilitate secure data transmission between business partners. These offer rich communication protocols from a security perspective.
Application Integration: SAP has connectors that enable connection to back-end systems, including cloud object storage and databases.
Security Measures: Strong encryption, digital signatures and identity management protocols guarantee the confidentiality and integrity of exchanged data.
Integration Platforms: Middleware solutions or integration as a service (IaaS) platforms provide the infrastructure for seamless connectivity and data transformation.
Translation Engine: It has the ability to convert documents from one specific format to another data format.
Data Mapping: Visualises data fields and provides visibility into the relationships between documents.
Message Tracking and Reporting: It has reporting and auditing features that provide real-time data and status information to business partners or system administrators.

Why is B2B Integration Important?

Today's business ecosystem has a global structure. Such a business environment requires companies to easily communicate and collaborate with partners, suppliers, customers and service providers. However, each business adopts its own approach to exchanging messages and files with its business partners while managing its operational processes. This means that each business actually uses different cloud or on-premises systems that require their own security and B2B protocols.

B2B integration solutions are designed to communicate and share electronic business documents easily between these different technologies that prefer different data standards to communicate with each other and cannot communicate naturally.

Using B2B integration enables businesses to digitally communicate with each other securely and quickly. Thus, it offers them the agility that businesses need to compete.

How Does B2B Integration Work?

B2B integration technologies work through various standards such as EDI (Electronic Data Interchange), API (Application Programming Interface) and web services. Business integration starts with the extraction of data from an internal source application and continues with its secure transfer to the external application through the integration platform.

The development of technology supports the selection of these applications as on-premises, cloud-based or hybrid. However, B2B services providers offer hybrid integration or cloud integration scenarios.

There are four basic phases in the B2B integration process:

Source Application
Data Format
Transport Protocol
Target Application

What is an example of a B2B integration?

b2b integration examples are as follows:

Real-time Viewing of Suppliers' Purchase Orders

For example, a retail store will procure a certain amount of a product from its suppliers. B2B Integration integrates existing ERP systems and creates a data flow between the systems. Thus, when the retail store creates a purchase order in its own ERP system, the incoming purchase order is automatically created in the vendor's ERP system. Thus, it accelerates the purchasing process.

Real-Time Tracking of Delivery Process

For example, the supplier company, from which the retail store orders products, carries out the transport processes through another company. With B2B data integration, the supply chain partner's shipment management system can connect the retail company and the supplier's ERP system, so that all stakeholders can track the status of the shipment. When there is any status update about the shipment, everyone can view it.

Automating Finance and Accounting Processes

One of the best examples of financial process automation is the integration between the CRM software and the ERP system. In this way, data is centralized and streamline. As a result, customer data can be managed in the best way, invoice creation, sending and receiving payments can be done automatically.

Automation of Logistics Processes

For example, consider a transport company that uses a B2B integration solution to organize shipments and track delivery status with its customers and logistics partners. When a customer requests a shipment, the company's existing systems automatically generate a booking confirmation and track the status of the delivery along the supply chain.

Benefits of B2B Integration

B2B integration helps businesses in many areas and provides advantages. That is why it is very important for businesses. Let's take a look at these advantages together.

Data Integrity

There are many applications, systems and hardware that businesses use in their business processes. Since all these applications, systems and hardware have different structures, it is not possible to directly transfer data with other assets. Thanks to the integration, companies can better process and manage the data obtained from different platforms by collecting them in ERP systems. Companies using software such as SAP, Oracle, Microsoft etc. as ERP systems use various integration solutions to perform bidirectional data transfer with 3rd party systems.

Monitoring and Reporting

For companies that carry out a large number of transactions with their business partners, it is impossible to track these transactions manually. B2B integration provides the status of transactions between businesses, the delivery status of messages, and automatic monitoring and reporting of errors.

Compliance with International Standards

There are international data transport protocols that companies have to comply with. These document transport protocols differ from industry to industry. X12 are some of the key B2B document standards, including EDIFACT and GS1. B2B integration ensures that companies comply with these document standards.

Improve Efficiency

B2B integration solutions brings processes faster by enabling the processes that used to be done manually to be performed automatically now. This automation increases the operational efficiency and data accuracy of companies.

Visibility

Implementing b2b provides just-in-time visibility into the processes that businesses carry out with their business partners.

What are Challenges of B2B Integration?

Although B2B system integration provides many benefits for businesses, it has some challenges:

Lack of Planning: Failure to plan the B2B integration process comprehensively can lead to incompatibility problems in common systems. This leads to inaccurate data and delays.
Weak Communication: If there is no uninterrupted communication between teams and partners, misunderstandings are inevitable. This causes delays in the integration process and inefficient processes. It damages co-operation.
Ignoring Security: Not ensuring the security of data against data breaches, cyber-attacks, etc. during the integration process causes major problems.

Do you need B2B Integration Support?

MDP Group has been supporting the integration processes of more than 140 companies for more than 10 years. MDP Group, which has one of the largest and most experienced integration teams in Europe, produces end-to-end solutions for the integration processes of enterprises with its know-how.

We are ready for your integration needs with our ready integration packages, integration tools and custom integration solutions. Do not hesitate to contact us for more detailed information.

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