Mogelijkheden binnen SCSN

Op de vorige pagina is beschreven wat SCSN voor impact heeft op uw IT omgeving. Maar wat zijn nou de mogelijkheden binnen SCSN? In dit hoofdstuk zullen we de mogelijkheden even op een rijtje zetten.

SCSN kan de start betekenen van het standaardiseren van bedrijfsprocessen. Momenteel zijn bij veel ondernemingen het ontvangen en versturen van data niet geautomatiseerd. Dit betekent dat data die ontvangen wordt van hun klanten gelezen, geïnterpreteerd en meestal manueel in het eigen ERP systeem moet worden ingevoerd. Dit kost veel tijd en is foutgevoelig. SCSN lost dit op doordat SCSN-berichten automatisch in het ERP systeem van het bedrijf verwerkt kunnen worden. Het hoofdstuk Belang van standaardisatie gaat dieper in op de belangen van standaardisatie.

Om bedrijfsprocessen te standaardisatie is het van belang dat je zorgt voor interne afstemming met de betrokken afdelingen in de eigen organisatie. Denk hierbij aan de financiële administratie, backoffice, en IT. Hierdoor creëer je intern draagvlak. De volgende stap is het in kaart brengen van de bedrijfsprocessen. Bedenk hier over welke processen u direct elektronische gegevens wilt uitwisselen met uw klant of leverancier. Het inschatten van een kostenplaatje en de voordelen kunnen uw inzicht geven in de keuze om aan te sluiten bij SCSN.

Automatische communicatie met klanten en/of leveranciers

Veel data wordt tegenwoordig via een EDI koppeling tussen twee bedrijven uitgewisseld. Wilt u met een nieuw bedrijf data uitwisselen, dan moet zal er opnieuw een EDI koppeling opgezet moeten worden. Bij SCSN is dit niet nodig. SCSN is zo opgezet dat een bedrijf maar één keer hoeft te worden aangemeld bij een SCSN Service Provider, waarna het met alle andere aangesloten bedrijven data kan uitwisselen. Het is dus niet nodig om met elk bedrijf afzonderlijk een verbinding te maken.

Uw klant of leverancier zou zich ook moeten conformeren aan de SCSN standaard om elektronische gegevens uit te kunnen wisselen. Dit betekent mogelijk dat zij zich ook bij een Service Provider moeten aansluiten om informatie elektronische te kunnen uitwisselen. Het is verstandig om met één van uw klanten en of leveranciers de eerste koppeling te realiseren. Overweeg om samen een project- en implementatie plan op te stellen en hierin de impact in kaart te brengen.

Wat kan ik nu?

Wanneer u lid bent geworden van SCSN en data kan uitwisselen met uw ketenpartners is een logische vervolgvraag: "Wat kan u nu met deze koppeling?", binnen de SCSN standaard is een hoop mogelijk, gelukkig is het mogelijk deel te nemen aan SCSN zonder alle mogelijkheden te benutten! Hieronder worden de verschillende mogelijkheden opgesomt, nu nog in het Engels maar binnenkort in het Nederlands.

Place an order

The first and most basic way type of communication with supply chain partners is by placing a simple order. However, this is often still a process that includes calling, emailing, copying data into multiple systems or a combination of these cumbersome, inefficient and error prone activities. Ideally, organizations would have their procurement systems connected.

By implementing the SCSN order message it becomes possible to send a standardized order message directly to the IT systems of your supplier. In its basic form, implementing this message means the ability to send an order to any SCSN member capable of responding to the message.

Messages involved: Order request message

Respond to an order request

When an order comes in, the seller of the product has to acknowledge this and respond with whether they either accepted or declined the order. Currently this often involves a manual action to respond to the customer.

The SCSN order response message facilitates responding to SCSN order messages through usage of the standardized SCSN infrastructure, allowing digitalization and automation of the purchase-to-pay process. Implementing the order response message involves the ability to receive SCSN order messages and respond to these using the status properties of order lines.

Messages involved: Order response message

Propose an order different from requested

Customers tend to ask what they want for, without considering what is possible to deliver. As such, the sales process of especially low volume products tends to be an interplay between the customer’s requests and the supplier’s capacity. For certain simple negotiations, such as the supplier only being able to deliver on a different date than requested, it is cumbersome to reject an order, call the customer to request a new order with the possible delivery date and approve that request.

To streamline this process a more advanced way of responding to SCSN order messages is possible. Specifically, the seller can suggest new order specifications using the same order message format as the buyer used. This allows efficient and even automated back and forth messaging between buyer and seller using the SCSN infrastructure to determine which specific order request is acceptable to both parties.

Messages involved: Order message and order response messages

Sent an order status update

Between placing an order and receiving the product, customers will often ask the supplier how their order is doing and whether the initial timelines are being met. Similarly, as a supplier you may check with your customer whether they’ve already received the shipment. This leads to emails and calls back and forth which contain little more information than is already in the manufacturing or ERP systems.

Using the SCSN order status message the supplier and buyer can automatically inform each other of changes in the status of their order without having to search for this information in internal systems when the other party calls.

Messages involved: Order status message

Updating an order after placing it

After an order has been accepted by the seller the simple order process is completed. However, in practice it is not uncommon for either the buyer or the seller to want to make some changes, such as the seller updating the delivery date or the buyer wanting to increase the order size. Traditionally, this would involve calling, searching for data in internal systems and maybe allowing the change. This makes it a common process which relies heavily on manual work.

The SCSN standard supports updating an order after it has been placed. This can be done both by the buyer and seller, if the other side agrees with the change. Implementing this capability involves using the order and order response messages in more internal processes and using the SCSN infrastructure for more communication between buyer and seller.

Messages involved: Order and order response messages

Sent a despatch advice

After a product has been manufactured it will be shipped to the customer, which may either be the seller or directly to the end customer. To communicate the shipment details a despatch advice may be used, which can be sent to the customer in a variety of ways. Most of which involve creating exports of the despatch advice and sending that through a separate system.

By using the SCSN despatch advice you can instead reuse the existing SCSN systems to share the shipment details, the basic capability to do this involves only sharing the despatch advice including the mandatory fields. The SCSN standard enables more complex despatch advice messages as well.

Messages involved: Despatch advice message

Deliver products over multiple deliveries

For certain deliveries one can complete the delivery and despatch the whole order in one shipment. However, for larger or more complex orders this is not always the case. Especially orders that take a long time to be completely fulfilled may be dispatched in multiple shipments.

SCSN allows breaking down an order into different shipments, without breaking the relation between the initial order and the dispatched shipments at various points in time. This is achieved by referencing a specific order line from a despatch message’s despatch line and specifying the quantity of that order line being delivered.

Messages involved: Order message, order response, and despatch line messages

Share shipment's physical structure

For traceability purposes it is useful to share not only that a product is part of a shipment, but also the exact structure of the shipment and which products are packaged together. Especially when these badges are, once created, kept together in the proceeding manufacturing steps. It can however often be difficult to communicate the wide variety of different packaging structures between companies, breaking the individual traceability of products once they are packaged in batches.

SCSN offers the capability to describe the physical structure of shipped products through the implementation of the transport handling unit component of the despatch message. This is an optional property in the message the implementation of which exposing an additional capability through the SCSN network.

Messages involved: Despatch advice message

Sent an invoice

When providing an invoice, one has to reference the provided product or service. Currently this may involve manually looking through sales systems or for orders. This is a time-consuming process in which mistakes lead to confusion on the side receiving an invoice for a to them unknown product.

SCSN allows streamlining this process by providing the opportunity to send an invoice using the SCSN infrastructure and an SCSN message which references the SCSN order messages. This reduces manual work and lowers the chance of errors. Implementing the invoice message involves providing the mandatory properties and supporting the optional properties.

Messages involved: Invoice message

Request a product price

During the development of a product, or while putting together a quotation for a customer, you may want to know what a product will cost if you were to order it from your supplier. This can be done by hand through calling or emailing with a sales representative from your supplier. This process if currently often used, even when the product price you’re interested in is a standard product or has a pre-defined price. In these cases, the manual process takes a lot of time for both the requester and provider of the information which may also be spent on more complex situations.

SCSN allows automating this process. For requesting the price of a product, one may use the request for quotation message, which allows requesting the price for a product in a specified period and with specified delivery terms. The supplier, providing the response to the message, may reach out in a manual operation to answer the request, or use another SCSN message to respond.

Messages involved: Request for quotation message

Provide a product price

When providing a customer with a product price through a quotation this may involve manual work, such as emailing the .pdf file to them. The customer then has to copy this quotation information in their internal systems to integrate it with the rest of their information or enable comparison between different quotations. On the supplier side sending such emails may be a time-consuming process as well, especially for standardized products which have a pre-defined price.

As alluded to in the request a product price capability, SCSN provides a standardized message to share quotations. This allows sharing a quotation using the SCSN infrastructure and referencing other SCSN messages, enabling streamlining of business-as-usual processes.

Messages involved: Quotation message

Adding discounts or additional charges to orders

When negotiating the price of a product there are situation in which a certain surcharge is applied or a discount is given, e.g., because a large amount of a product was ordered. These discounts or additional charges can be negotiated manually, but for clarity the agreed upon amounts have to be recorded in the internal systems of the buyer and seller side. Moreover, some additional charges may be standardized and could automatically be communicated.

To streamline this process, the SCSN order and order response messages allow defining an allowance charge on both the order and order line level. These allowance charges can be used to specify a discount or additional charge. Implementing the capability to use this charge involves interpreting and integrating this information in your internal systems when receiving a message using the SCSN component, as well as being able to specify a charge when sending a message.

Messages involved: order message and order response message

Order off-the-shelve products with additional services

When ordering complex products for a specific usage, it may be needed to customize a standard product. For example, cutting a piece of metal to a specified size. However, as these customizations are not standard, the exact product will not be available in the supplier’s product catalogue. Instead, the buyer has to specify the additional services to be applied to the standard product before delivery. Communicating these additional services is often done through a back-and-forth between seller and buyer to reach a common understanding on what has to be done, how much this will cost and how this relates to a potentially larger order.

SCSN supports this process by allowing the addition of configuration parameters in an order message as well as specifying dimensions of a product. Both of these may be provided on an orderline level, allowing multiple differently customized products to be bought in a single order. Implementing this capability involves supporting the receiving and interpreting of the optional dimension and configuration components of an item in the order and order response messages.

Messages involved: Order message

Order custom products

In certain cases, there may not be a (customizable) product available from the product catalogue. Instead, the buyer wants a completely custom product to be provided. In these cases, a large amount of product information has to be shared between the buyer and seller. The exact information depends on the product being ordered, but this information still has to be related to order, invoice or despatch information in the buyer and seller’s systems. As such, currently there may be a lot of manual work to relate the measurements and details of a product to this information.

SCSN supports this process through the measurement message. This message allows sending custom documents between SCSN members, while specifying to which other concepts this message relates. Implementing this message may look like allowing SCSN to add attachments to an order in your internal system.

Messages involved: Measurement message

Sharing document as part of a message

Although the pre-defined messages in the SCSN message model can convey a large amount of information already, there may be cases where additional files are needed to share further details. As these documents have to be related to a certain SCSN message it would be a wasteful process to send these documents separately and then connect them to an e.g., an order.

Instead, SCSN offers the capability to attach a document to every message. This can be done through the additional document reference component, in which some metadata of the document can be placed, as well as the document itself can be shared, either through referencing an external location, or by embedding it in the SCSN message as binary object. Implementing this capability involves being able to send and receive documents using through SCSN.

Messages involved: Usage of attachment component in all messages

Share an updated price catalogue

To determine if a supplier has the product, you are looking for on order, or the price of a standard product one may want to look at the supplier’s price catalogue. Ideally these are available straight from the internal IT systems to efficiently determine what has to be purchased to fulfill an incoming order. However, currently price catalogues are often not available from once own IT system, instead they are shared through the suppliers IT via for example a web portal. This results in manual search work and copying over product IDs and catalogue prices.

Fortunately, SCSN provides the price catalogue message, which allows a supplier to send the latest catalogue of products, prices and qualifiers to its potential customers. Moreover, these catalogues may be personalized for different customers. Implementing this capability involves sending your up-to-date product catalogue message to members of SCSN.

Messages involved: Price catalogue message

Share an updated price catalogue including discounts and additional chargers

When sharing a price catalogue, you may want to include an allowance charge in the catalogue already. This may be used to indicate that the base price will be increased or decreased. Especially when sharing customized price catalogues to different customers this can be used to reflect bilaterally negotiated prices.

The SCSN Price catalogue message supports such charges in the same way other SCSN messages do, through an allowance charge component which can be related to a specific item. Implementing the capability to share these additional charges or discounts involves using this optional component of the price catalogue message.

Messages involved: Price catalogue message

Request an updated price catalogue

As a buyer you may want to make sure that the price catalogue you have of you supplier is up to date, what the price is in the current period, or because you’re looking for a new supplier you may want to request a price catalogue to begin considering a company as potential supplier. Ideally, this price catalogue would immediately be integrated in your internal systems, allowing referencing from incoming orders to the components that have to be bought and the price associated with this. However, currently this may involve a lot of manual copying of data, or cross referencing between different information sources.

As a customer the SCSN price catalogue request message allows you to request a price catalogue from a specified supplier. Or even a specific catalogue line for the item you are particularly interested in. Implementing this capability means being able to initiate a request for a price catalogue, as well as being able to receive such as message when a supplier sends it.

Messages involved: Price catalogue request message

Share a demand forecast with suppliers

As a manufacturer you may foresee changes in demand which could be important to your suppliers, these are not necessarily certain yet, so you can’t place an order yet, but you do want your supplier to be aware of what’s likely to come. Currently this is often not done resulting in a lack of supply chain transparency and behaviour as described in the bullwhip effect. Or, if forecasts are being shared it is via an email or phone call, which cannot easily be incorporated in the forecasting calculations of your supplier.

SCSN provides a solution for this challenge through the forecast message. This message describes the expected number of items to be ordered in a specified time. Implementing is capability involves the ability to send forecasts to your suppliers, as well as receive forecast messages from your customers.

Messages involved: Forecast message

Share components of a product

When sharing product information, the bill of materials (BOM) is often one of the most important parts. It describes the components making up a product and is used in various ways such as when selecting suppliers or production planning. However, the BOM for especially complex products can be very large and is difficult to incorporate in internal systems.

To aid in the sharing of the BOM the SCSN BillOfMaterials message can be used, this message provides a structured way of presenting a BOM which can be shared using already implemented SCSN infrastructure. Implementing this message provides the ability to further share the makeup of a product and work with supply chain partners to manufacture the product as a whole in the most efficient manner possible.

Messages involved: Bill Of Materials message

Share a product's technical details

When sharing information about a product most of the specific information for a specific product is contained in the technical product design. This package of multiple files may contain for example 2D or 3D models, material specifications or manufacturing margins. Especially for highly complex products with small margins these TPD packages contain important information which has to be considered in the manufacturing of a product.

SCSN supports the sharing of these documents in the TPD Package message. This message may contain multiple documents with meta data and can be used to share these application specific documents while reusing the SCSN infrastructure for data sharing.

Messages involved: TPD Package message