Presanna Venkadesh Sundararajan
Senior Architect in Wipro Technologies
www.wipro.com
BENCHMARKING THE ENTERPRISES
B2B INTEGRATION MATURITY
Table of contents
03.................................................................................................................. .............Background
03.................................................................................................................. .............Why do we have to measure the B2Bi maturity level?
04.................................................................................................................. .............What are the key performance indicators that demonstrate the B2Bi maturity level of an
enterprise?
05.................................................................................................................. .............Where do we start our journey to benchmark our current B2Bi maturity level?
06.............................................................................................................. .................Initial Services
06............................................................................................................... ................Standardized Services
06................................................................................................................. ..............Measurable Services
07........................................................................................................... ....................Optimized Services
07................................................................................................................. ..............What is our take away from this proposed B2B Integration Maturity Model?
08........................................................................................................... ....................Conclusion
09................................................................................................................. ..............About Wipro Author
09................................................................................................................. ..............About Wipro Technologies
Why do we have to measure
the B2Bi maturity level?
Background
Therefore, from its humble beginning of largely traditional batch oriented
transaction based exchanges that primarily constituted EDI data, the B2B
exchanges in todays business includes a large array of data formats,
protocols, security, large data sizes, real time, near real-time, SOA, web
services, policy enforcement, auditing and governance etc.
03
Enterprises have long been using Business-to-Business integration (B2Bi) technology to enable
automated and efficient exchange of business data with their trading partners that include customers,
vendors, banks, third party service providers etc. With growing trends like increased focus on
transforming and optimizing the demand supply networks, extending business processes outside the
boundary of enterprises, connecting enterprise applications with cloud services, integrating social and
mobile apps with enterprise systems etc., there is a major force at work requiring enterprises to
upgrade and fortify their B2B integration capability.
In this rapidly evolving scenario, the ability of an enterprise to adapt to the
above said demands are increasingly becoming a critical competitive
differentiator and a key enabling factor to stay ahead and thrive. Clearly the
B2B integration capability of an enterprise in this interconnected world has
a strong corelation to the business performance of the same.
In addition to this, consider the following facts (as reported in analyst
reports and market predictions) and the importance of a B2B integration
layer for the performance and competitiveness of an organization in the
market place that makes the case for itself.
During the course of the years between 2010 and 2015, the global top
2000 enterprises are expected, at the least, to double their B2B
integration data exchanges volume
Prediction is that by the year 2016, almost half of all the new integration
projects will involve integration between enterprises on-premise
application, trading partners and cloud based services
Another prediction is that by the year 2017, about two-thirds of all the
new integration flows will extend outside the enterprise firewall
This whitepaper recommends enterprises revisit, evaluate and measure
their B2B integration capability by benchmarking against the broad
classification of B2B integration maturity levels described here.
KPI Indicators
04
What are the key performance indicators that demonstrate the
B2Bi maturity level of an enterprise?
Having established the need to measure the B2Bi maturity levels, the
question that follows is how to go about this now. For this, let us look at
some of the key performance indicators (both qualitative and quantitative)
KPI Category
System Capability
(Ability of the system to support
emerging technologies, data and
communication scenarios)
Are you able to support the latest integration technology, data and communication standards in your
B2Bi platform?
How many different platforms (B2Bi related applications) are being used by you to enable B2Bi
integration with your partners?
Are you able to support complex data processing requirements that are required to integrate data with
your internal and external stakeholder systems?
How fast and efficiently are you able to build connectors to integrate with all your internal applications
and systems?
Are you able to handle unstructured data transfers (large files and large volume of file) efficiently?
Are you compliant to the increasing regulatory and industry compliances for exchanging files with
partners?
Process Efficiency
(Speed and performance in
on-boarding new partners to the
B2Bi pl atform and enabl i ng
business workflows for exchanging
data with partners)
What speed and efficiency is required to enable a new B2B integration process flow with your partner?
What is the reusability index of your B2Bi business development effort?
How many partners are fully integrated to exchange business documents using the B2Bi platform?
What is the time/effort involved to onboard a partner to use the B2Bi platform?
What is the cost incurred to onboard a partner to use the B2Bi platform?
Operations Cost
(The effectiveness, efficiency and
the cost involved in supporting and
maintaining the B2B integration
platform and interfaces)
What is the operational cost of supporting and maintaining your B2Bi platform?
What is your annual expenditure towards SLA penalty charges?
Are you able to monitor and track data exchanges with your partner and have end-to-end visibility of the
B2Bi process flow?
What is the cost incurred for data transfers and communication?
Do you use open and cost efficient modes of data transfers with your partners?
that help us measure and monitor an enterprises B2B integration platform,
processes, operations and its overall effectiveness.
Customer Experience
(Partners business end user
satisfaction of the effectiveness,
performance and usability of your
B2B integration services)
How flexible are you to your partner demands in setting up the B2Bi data exchange?
What is the average time and effort spent by the customer in setting up B2Bi data exchanges with your
systems?
What is the ease with which the customer exchanges data with your B2Bi platform?
What is the overall customer experience index in setting up and maintaining the B2B integration
workflow and relationships with your organization?
05
Where do we start our journey
to benchmark our current
B2Bi maturity level?
Given that the above key performance indicators of the B2B infrastructure
is spread across multiple facets, we propose a simplified model
categorizing the B2Bi maturity into four levels. These levels are intended to
indicate different levels of sophistication and performance of the
organizations B2Bi services using some of the key parameters that directly
or indirectly influence the above KPIs.
The key B2B integration parameters that are considered to categorize the
levels are:
B2Bi Platform
B2Bi workflows development, support and maintenance
Partner onboarding process
Support for different data types and standards (structured,
un-structured, global standards etc.)
Support for data integration patterns (batch, online etc.)
Figure 1
Support for communication methods used to connect and transfer files
securely to partners (VAN, EDIINT, SFTP, HTTP(S), Web Services etc.)
Each of these parameters influence one or more of the KPIs listed above like
the right platform chosen is key to your ability to effectively support latest
technology, data and communication standards, handle your complex
business needs, and drive your operations cost down etc. We can easily
visualize in similar lines on how the other parameters from the above list
influences enhanced capability, reduced cost, improved process efficiency,
resulting in a positive customer experience.
Broadly speaking, depicted below is a simplified model categorizing the B2Bi
maturity into four levels of increasing sophistication and performance as
following:
Initial
Standardized
Measurable
Optimized
These levels are used to look at the various B2B integration characteristics
of an organization in a holistic manner based on different parameters and
categorize them into the respective maturity level in a broad sense.
Initial
Services
Standardized
Services
Standalone EDI Translators/
Custom B2Bi Solutions
Point-to-Point
Integrations
Manual Partner
On-boarding
Custom File Transfer
Methods
More of VAN
Communications
Batch Exchanges
B2Bi Platforms Adopted
Business Process
Modeling
Repeatable Partner
On-boarding Process
Centralized File Transfer
Solution
VAN Consolidation & use of
internet based communications
Batch & Real time, B2B
Services (SOA)
Measurable
Services
Consolidated B2B
Platform
BAM Adoption-KPI/
SLA Dashboards
Business Process
Visibility
Accelerated Partner -
On-boarding Framework
Managed File Transfer with
Automated Tracking/Auditing
Optimized
Services
Comprehensive
Integration Solution
B2Bi Platform, Process, Operations, Customer Experience (Capability, Efficiency and Performance)
Optimized Business Process
using Lean and Sig Sigma
with real time monitoring
Collaborative Community
Management Solutions
Optimized Fully automated
managed file transfers
with proactive metrics etc.
Secure Communications
with non-repudiation
automatic resend etc.
APIs for B2Bi services
exposed to external partners.
Event Driven B2B collaboration
Extensive use of open protocols/
secure Internet communications
SOA Governance B2B
B2B Choreography
06
Initial Services
At the initial level, typically, we look at the use of point solutions for EDI
translation, communications etc., and development of point-to-point
interfaces that connect different enterprise applications with your partner
systems. In this scenario, the reuse between the different workflows are
minimal, that results in increased duplication of effort due to lack of a
business process centric approach to its development. The partner
on-boarding process is manual with no standard guidelines and is
implemented in an ad-hoc fashion effective but not efficient.
Also, from the data exchanges perspective, the unstructured data
exchanges (aka file based data exchanges) are looked at in silos as
department levels use cases are implemented using an FTP based
approach resulting more often in a spaghetti architecture that impedes
central monitoring and control. For the other more traditional data
exchanges (aka transaction based exchanges like EDI messages etc.), VAN
based communication methods are leveraged more commonly resulting in
additional cost overhead and mostly support only the batch mode of
exchanges with the partners effectively.
repeatable process framework to streamline and standardize the partner
on-boarding process.
From the data exchanges perspective, unstructured data (aka file based
data exchanges) is implemented more efficiently using a centralized secure
file transfer solution that provides guaranteed and secure delivery of files,
support for multiple protocols, support for large files etc. The holistic
platforms multi-protocol support enables migrating from VAN to internet
based communication methods and creates opportunities to explore
VAN consolidation thereby optimizing traditional VAN based delivery
costs. The enhanced gateway capability also provides for increased
support to real time exchanges in addition to batch interactions with
partners. And apart from static batch and real time interfaces, the ability to
model services, provides for B2B integration functions to be used as
independent services that can be exposed and consumed by internal and
external participating systems and processes.
Standardized Services
As we move on to the standardized level, a B2B Gateway platform based
approach is adopted to address a more holistic set of B2B integration
requirements. And more often than not when enterprises find it
challenging to roll out these standardized platforms for the entire
enterprise, they take a divide and conquer approach making these
adoptions standard at localized and manageable levels like business
divisions or geography etc. The platforms enable a consistent approach to
develop and support workflow, data transformation, integration with
internal applications etc. along with business process modeling/workflow
designer capabilities in most cases. This capability makes it easy to build
integration patterns that can be reused for multiple implementations along
with an ability to automate business processes efficiently. This also paves
way for an SOA architecture based service development model that bears
in mind the principle to use these business processes as independent and
atomic units.
The B2Bi Gateway platform also allows for standardization of partner
on-boarding process by providing for Trading Partner Management (TPM)
utilities a single consolidated tool to configure, maintain and support
partner set-ups, standard reusable business process frameworks that can
be reused across partner set-ups etc. This leads to development of
Measurable Services
At the Measurable Services level, the impetus is on consolidating to a single
enterprise B2Bi Gateway solution building and enhancing on top of the
assets accrued from standardizing the platform and the services earlier.
Once the interfaces are brought into a unified platform umbrella and the
integration processes themselves are organized and built using a business
process modeling based approach, the focus now expands to putting
together these individual services/processes to accomplish a complete
business cycle aka business process choreography.
With increased business process automations, monitoring and tracking
these processes and data exchanges providing for end-to-end business
visibility and agility makes it imperative to build a business activity
monitoring layer on top of the standardized and consolidated B2B
gateway platform. This provides for configuring, and tracking integration
flow and associated metrics, complete auditing of all actions, message
corelation among different messages, part of a complete business process
cycle, SLA / KPI dashboards and reports on these various business metrics.
Also consolidation to a single platform creates opportunities for
enterprises to strategically invest and address the partner on-boarding
functions using an accelerated tool based solution that relies more on
automation and less on manual intervention. This automation results in
significant effort reduction and improves the partner on-boarding
cycle time.
07
Optimized Services
At this highest level, the impetus is on leveraging the assets built in the
previous phases and to continue improving and optimizing the B2Bi
service. This phase completes the platform consolidation process creating
a comprehensive integration solution (CIS) that provides for a complete
set of capabilities that includes EAI, B2B, EDI, XML, MFT, SOA essential to
address the most demanding and complex business integration challenges
of an enterprise. Leveraging the metrics captured by the business activity
monitoring layer, proactive and reactive actions are configured based on
events reducing the lead time on actionable events.
Also now that the B2B integration processes are more aligned and
modeled after the business process that it supports, the ease to apply
business transformation initiatives like lean, six sigma etc., and further
optimize the integration process along with its associated business
program increases and drives direct tangible business benefit to the
And from the data exchanges perspective, the approach for handling
unstructured data (aka file based data exchanges) evolves from the simple
need to effectively and securely transfer files to a more auditable and
measurable managed file transfer services that provides for monitoring and
tracking capabilities along with the ability to support and prove compliance.
With the growing service maturity and capability, more and more
integration projects will look to leverage open and internet based
protocols like SFTP, EDIINT (EDI over the internet) AS2, HTTP(S) and
Web Services for their batch and real time data transfers. And with the
integration functions increasingly being built as reusable services, there is
also effort towards SOA Governance within B2B projects.
enterprise. With high level automation and optimization, the partner
onboard functions are potential areas to be augmented to a more holistic
community management solution enabling self-service, survey roll-outs,
collaborative profile maintenance etc. depending on the partner
community collaboration requirements of the business. To further
optimize partner collaborations, B2Bi services are exposed as APIs to
external partners enabling self-service and faster time to market.
And from the data exchanges perspective, approach for handling
unstructured data (aka file based data exchanges) matures into a
comprehensive managed file transfer solution capable of handling multiple
integration scenarios like System-to-System, Human-to-Human etc. with
more proactive metrics and monitoring. High Level Automation is again
the theme that looks at content-based filtering/routing creating intelligent
file transfer interfaces. Communication handling is also optimized by
providing for automatic resends and resubmissions support for re-routing,
broadcast messages etc. Thus the overall capability evolves into an Event
driven completely automated, monitored, managed and fully governed
B2B integration services
What is our take away from
this proposed B2B Integration
Maturity Model?
Summarizing the discussion so far, below is a snapshot view of the typical
state of B2B integration in enterprises of different maturity levels. The
purpose is to draw the attention to key details of the state of play of B2B
integration and the key focus areas and opportunities for improvements at
each of these broad maturity level categories.
Figure 2
Maturity
Level
What is
done well?
What are the
opportunities
to focus?
Initial Services
Effective B2B point
solutions
Tactical
Gets job done
Shift focus from getting it
done to doing it better
Look at business case for a
B2Bi platform roadmap
Initiate platform strategy
ROI analysis
Standardized Services Measurable Services Optimized Services
B2B Platform Standardization
Business Process / Service
Modeling Capability
Repeatability due to platform
approach
Secure file transfer revamp
Create SOA centric architecture
Improve process efficiencies
(Repeatable Partner Onboarding
Process Framework etc.)
Reduce VAN Cost (VAN to
EDIINT migrations, VAN
consolidation etc.)
Platform rationalization
Consolidate to a single B2Bi
enterprise platform
Business process choreography
BAM for proactive monitoring
Mature to managed file
transfer method
Business metrics monitoring &
tracking
Message trials and end-to-end
Audit trails
Increased Automation of
business processes
SLA/KPI Dashboards
SOA Governance for B2B
projects
CIS based holistic approach to
address the enterprises integration
requirements
Proactive actions based on business
metrics
Community management portals
for partner collaboration
Business transformation initiatives
like Six Sigma & Lean etc.
Enhanced partner collaboration
initiatives like self-onboarding
survey rollouts
Fully Automated Processes
APIs for B2Bi services
08
B2B integration is a very critical and complex challenge right at the forefront of most of the business transformation initiatives that the global enterprises of this
inter-connected world are embarking upon at this point of time. The nature, type, priority and complexity of these challenges might vary significantly across
the various enterprises and can internally take different forms like time to market business priorities to rapidly onboard and roll out B2B integration services
to partners globally, providing end-to-end visibility to business stakeholders for all the global data exchanges, ability to support and automate multiple
integration scenarios and capabilities to onboard partners of different IT capability levels etc.
As a result, the roadmap of the B2B maturity journey for the enterprises also involves different priorities and challenges based on where they are (current
maturity level), what are their priorities (key parameter that needs immediate focus and other strategic priorities for competitive differentiation) and where
they want to go (in the near future and strategically in the long run). Having said that, the above maturity model in trying to capture the essence of a typical B2B
integration evolution journey, will serve as a good starting point to evaluate your B2B integration current state, identify and map your business priorities to the
B2B integration parameters and mark your immediate and strategic target state.
Conclusion
09
Presanna Venkadesh Sundararajan is a Senior Architect in Wipro Technologies and in his current role heads the Center of
Excellence for B2B integration (B2Bi) technologies in the Enterprise Business Integration practice (EBI). He is responsible for
solution development and thought leadership in the areas of B2Bi Gateway, Electronic Data Interchanges, Managed File
transfer and related technologies. He is part of the leadership team and contributes to the development Wipros B2Bi
practice strategy and forward looking initiatives. He has more than a decade of experience in the B2B integration area
consulting, architecting, building and managing B2B integration infrastructures for large global enterprises.
About the Author
Wipro Technologies, the global IT business of Wipro Limited (NYSE:WIT) is a leading Information Technology, Consulting and Outsourcing company,
that delivers solutions to enable its clients do business better. Wipro Technologies delivers winning business outcomes through its deep industry
experience and a 360 degree view of "Business through Technology" helping clients create successful and adaptive businesses. A company recognized
globally for its comprehensive portfolio of services, a practitioners approach to delivering innovation and an organization wide commitment to
sustainability, Wipro Technologies has over 140,000 employees and clients across 54 countries. For more information, please visit www.wipro.com
About Wipro Technologies
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