b2bgatewaynet
Simplifying EDI Integration Needs

“Today, the efficacy of technology platforms mostly depends on its ability to offer secure, stable and scalable outcomes,” remarks Kevin Hoyle, CEO, B2BGateway.Net. Focusing on these three core factors, B2BGateway provides a balance of hosted and on premise solutions, housed in their data center. Primarily, an Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) company, B2BGateway offers cost-effective, easy to use, cloud-based EDI solutions. Having partnered with several Third Party Logistic (3PL) companies, Hoyle believes the 3PL industry is currently at a tipping point relying markedly on EDI and data connectivity to communicate seamlessly with their customers and all relevant parties in the supply chain. Using EDI greatly speeds up the communication process, while at the same time drastically reducing errors and labour costs, as it removes the need to re-key data.

“When our clients sign up with us, they want their EDI to be taken care of, but at the same time they want to have some say in the modifications made,” says Hoyle. Owing to this demand, B2BGateway offers tools which streamline the EDI process, allowing customers to keep a constant vigil on any updates or enhancements made. The company offers a client portal in their website, giving customers instant access to current statuses and progress in a particular project. Firmly believing that a well informed client is a happy client, B2BGateway conducts several webinars every month to educate existing customers as well as the public on complex EDI functionalities.

Often a common challenge with EDI is changes made in the ERP system, without the knowledge of the service provider, causing the EDI to fail. In one instance, a B2BGateway client faced a mismatch in invoices, that weren’t transferred from the customer’s system to the trading partners.

“On interrogation of our internal system, we realized that the client had made updates to their ERP without informing their B2BGateway Support Engineer. To ensure that this scenario would not happen again in the future, we pulled our development team together and built a tool which is part of our client portal,” states Hoyle.

The tool now allows clients to upload a spreadsheet or a ColdFusion Component (CFC) file with a list of invoices into B2BGateway’s website. B2BGateway will use the uploaded data to perform an automatic data flow audit, from the client’s system all the way to the receipt and acknowledgement by the trading partner. This helps to create effective audit traceability for all clients, and satisfies a SOC 1 requirement crucial to meet the audit demands of publically traded companies.

Meeting a client’s need against all odds is one of the things that truly sets B2BGateway apart from the pack. After transferring a customer’s data into their system, B2BGateway disassembles and saves it in a standard internal format. Having all of the data tagged and accessible, B2BGateway is able to convert the data into any format to meet the customer's needs. “At B2BGateway, we believe in developing services, while our competitors believe in selling services,” states Hoyle.

We offer tools which streamline the EDI process, allowing customers to keep a constant vigil on any updates or enhancements

Always focusing on the quality of their products Hoyle says that, “We strive to be the best in the industry.” Over the past years, to accommodate an effective setup and easy resolution of production issues, B2BGateway has built different departments and groups in hierarchical structures. In the near future, the company plans on rolling out a system where customer service agents can use certain tools to implement code changes. This will bring down the set up and maintenance times significantly.