Develop a Comprehensive Business-to-Business Integration StrategyStrong partnerships require seamless integration; don’t let lagging integration capabilities undermine your B2B relationships.No business is an island: every business needs to exchange data with other organizations in their value chain. Whether it is exchanging financial transactions such as purchase orders and invoices, sharing medical information about patients, or exchanging employment data with government, it requires data transfer between business entities. The business sees the efficiencies and cost savings associated with B2B integration but overlooks the implications of increasing integration capabilities with trading partners. Every new partner that is onboarded comes at a cost: sometimes the cost of new technology, but always the cost of IT resource demand. The complexity and implications of B2B integration may cause projects to be postponed, and delays in integration further drive costs up, and drive capabilities down.Understanding the requirements of your trading partner landscape, the goals and objectives of the business, and the constraints of the IT environment can help you design a scalable strategy for maximum return. This allows the business to reap the benefits of B2B integration, while IT gains control over variability.Consider insource, outsource, or hybrid deployment options to maximize value and minimize cost.Leverage your power of negotiation with partners to enforce standards and promote flexibility in your B2B integration environment for cost effective solutions.B2B strategies need to be able to scale to meet volume, protocol, partner, and performance objectives.The fewer number of protocols and schemas you need to support, the more cost effective it will be.Organizations that have settled on EDI as their standard protocol and schema still only integrate 20% of their partners.If you are a small company, try tapping into your partner’s resources. It might be possible to receive discounts on hardware and software or alternative means of integration assistance.IT can be an enabler of the value that the business can get out of B2B integration, but the strategy has to be done with a cohesive approach or the costs of enablement will exceed the benefits.Make sure you are solving the right problems through alignment of business goals with partner integration objectives.There are many alternatives, and some creativity can create a best-fit solution for your organization.Select a deployment alternative that is cost effective in your B2B integration environment.A self-funding initiative is more attractive to the business. It is an initiative that either pays for itself by reallocating funds from one place to another, or actually generates new income to offset cost.In the beginning, electronic integration may cost more per transaction, but over time the cost of each transaction should decrease as the number of transactions increases.

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