How a One-to-Many Integration is a Game-Changer for Your ERP & Supply Chain

The best way to work in a digital supply chain depends on how each stakeholder maximizes their resources by connecting, reusing, replicating, and interoperating them across their supply chain. Enterprise systems consist of on-site legacy applications, self-hosted applications inside a private virtual cloud, and vendor-hosted applications under a SAAS (Software-as-a-Service) agreement.

The Value of Enterprise Integration

Integrations help solve & simplify the need for new software as the business evolves with time. It allows you to keep the system you’re using by adding third-party applications to enhance functionality. Enterprise integration is a new renewable energy that leading companies are harnessing worldwide with time.

It uses methodologies and technologies to integrate applications, processes, data, and devices into the whole IT landscape. It is vital because it helps connect the communication and functionality across systems, thereby allowing the organizations to react as quickly as possible to the needs of a business and become an agile, more responsive enterprise.

An integration platform, thus, can be defined as a service or application designed to share commands and data between independent systems or applications. The problems solved by the integration include on-time data migration and real-time tightly coupled system integration that shares commands on a synchronous basis.

The trade technologies available within a platform that make it the ideal choice for companies should include -

• Electronic documents
• Electronic transfer of documentation
• Chamber of Commerce integration
• Container tracking
• Vessel tracking

These, teamed with functionalities like smart contracts, smart documents, trade & process compliance, and tailored recommendations ensures enterprise integration is your first choice when you want to streamline your entire supply chain.

Common Problems Solved by Enterprise Integration

The primary function of an Enterprise Application Integration is bridging the gap between various departmental software. It resolves several long-standing inefficiencies within the business functionalities. This includes (but is not limited to):

• Time-consuming or manual processes that distract from strategic, higher-value work.
• Lack of responsiveness to the customer or trading partner requirements.
• Impersonal & complicated experiences can stifle partner, employee, and customer engagement.
• Non-intuitive workflows, unconnected processes, and limited visibility across critical value chains.
• The limited success while entering new digital ecosystems and marketplaces like the inability to monetize APIs.

Advantages of Enterprise Application Integration

As companies are delving into the digital landscape, understanding how to make work easier has become a top priority. Some of the benefits that enterprise integration can give companies in that regard include (but is not limited to):

• Improved Sharing of Information: Enterprise integration is a bridge between the information flows from the outside or within the IT infrastructure. It aims to create data storage, eliminate redundancies, and consolidate data collection by becoming a single-entry point for various departments, reducing the manual labour involved in searching for information.
• Creates Flexibility Within the Infrastructure: Through enterprise application integration, companies can easily respond to the growing consumer expectations. It removes the requirement for employees to go through the learning curve of learning several new applications. Enterprise integration leads to a streamlined business process combining the information of multiple applications and functionality in a user-friendly single interface.
• Higher Efficiency: Enterprise application integration makes communication between all the parties involved easier, reducing the effort and time otherwise taken for the same. It gives better functionality and improved control over the entire supply chain process. With an enterprise application integration in place, the organization can identify and respond to new opportunities as and when they arise across the supply chain.
• Automate the Workflow: It streamlines different processes that handle the data or activities from various software applications. The results from the same can be analyzed and inputted to the individual ERP system of the company to understand the areas suitable for investment.
• Increased Agility: An advantage of enterprise integration is its ability to capitalize on and identify the opportunities available in the field before anyone else. It gives an excellent insight into the disruptions within the supply chain and shifts in the market.

How Can Timber Exchange Help With Enterprise Integration?

Timber Exchange is a smart supply chain platform that covers all steps starting from the inquiry of cargo to the delivery at the final destination. There are three major stakeholders in this process - the importer, the exporter and the freight forwarder. Depending on the country and role in the supply chain, each counterparty would need a selected set of tools and features.

Services and tools required by these counterparties, such as tracking the goods, integration to the Chamber of Commerce, and customs integration (among others), are not unified, which directly hampers the efficiency of the process. However, at Timber Exchange, you get all of these features and many others in one platform.

The platform is integrated with 20 national Chambers of Commerce, 18,000 bulk vessels, 10 courier companies, 60 container lines, and 1 customs authority for ease of information flow and real-time tracking.

The platform has over 100 smart tools designed specifically for the stakeholders that give you cost-effective and time-efficient solutions that facilitate all international trade requirements. These tools, all-in-all, work towards delivering increased productivity, improved accuracy, real-time tracking & information, and reducing manual administration. As part of the Timber Exchange’s shared workspace, through these various smart tools and integrations, you can:

• Manage deals, negotiations & payments
• Book, offer & tender goods & freight
• Track responsibilities, smart updates & share tasks
• Issue, draft, edit, upload & approve documents
• Track goods & couriers
• Get the latest news, reliability data, statistics, and analytics in one central location.

As the administrator of your company, you can also designate employees to view, modify, or access each deal-specific data.

If you’re interested in trading with Egyptian counterparties, Timber Exchange is also integrated with CargoX and NAFEZA so that you can automate and comply with Egypt’s new ACID regulations.

The best part about the Timber Exchange supply chain platform is that you can pick and choose a package you like (Basic, Advanced, Premium, and Enterprise) as per your requirements and make the most of these advanced supply chain tools available on the platform. It also compliments your present ERP system and makes the supply chain process smoother. If you want to understand how enterprise application integration can help your company be more efficient, check out https://www.timber.exchange/advanced-supply-chain-tools or book a demo with our experts at https://www.timber.exchange/contact-us for in-depth information on the subject.