Supplier enablement

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Supplier Enablement is the process of electronically connecting suppliers (or other trading partners) to a company's supply chain. Supplier enablement is achieved when suppliers of goods and services are connected to a company's back-office systems to exchange critical business documents such as purchase orders, invoices and other information. Suppliers can be connected, or "enabled," using a variety of means including Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), Extensible Markup Language (XML), Web forms or other e-commerce tools.

The benefits of supplier enablement include reduced supply chain costs, improved invoice tracking, reduced procurement costs, reducing or eliminating non-value added (manual) processes, and improved communications. Supplier enablement extends the value of a company's internal IT investments, such ERP, into their trading communities--expanding the ROI on an initially internal investment.

[edit] References