Hardware and
Building Supply Chain Management

Building the supply chain of the future

Whether you are a hardware and building supplier looking to trade electronically or a retailer or merchant looking to trade with your suppliers, B2BE’s supply chain solutions can help on your Purchase to Pay or Order to Cash automation journey based on our long history in the hardware and building industry.

Complexity of products

Hardware and building products are diverse with diverse supplier bases. This goes for suppliers of tools, timber, paneling, and garden products. Movement storage and distribution are, therefore, harder as these goods are not always stocked and might be ordered based on client demand or specifiers further up the supply chain.

Electronic uptake

Many suppliers can't support electronic trading. Their systems often aren't capable, the volume may not warrant the effort, or the products can’t be easily managed electronically. For wholesalers and retail customers, SME's minimal employees, and the installer are also the administrator and bookkeeper so electronic trading is almost impossible.

The long tail

With the diversity of products within the hardware and building supply chain, this means many wholesalers and retailers will be dealing with thousands of suppliers. Some of them will be dealt with hundreds of times a week whereas others will be more sporadic, meaning some suppliers trade very few documents and very infrequently. The industry has many specialist suppliers in very niche areas adding to supply chain complexity.

Goods management and receipting

As many of the goods within the hardware and building industry are bulky or ordered in large volumes and therefore not stocked. They therefore will be shipped directly from the supplier to the end customer which means the goods need to be booked in so the customer can be charged and the supplier paid and visibility of this isn't easy, particularly with third party logistics. Similarly proof of delivery becomes a very important element in this process to mitigate invoice payment issues.

Solutions for the hardware & building industry

EDI

Hardware and building companies must deal with the challenges of making purchases and sales of complex products in their supply chain. Using B2BE’s fully integrated EDI, for customers and suppliers, solution means automation of the supply chains by shifting paper to digital.

B2BE can support any document type and the cloud based EDI solution also delivers an ‘any to ‘any environment meaning any document formats and standards can be supported to get you going quickly.

Accounts Payable

With B2BE automating hardware and building companies’ accounts payable, these organisations’ accounting will see improved productivity, efficiency, and accuracy. The accounts payable solution can manage invoice receipt processes, receiving all supplier invoices electronically through fully outsourced solutions that can be configured to meet the needs of the market with over 95% first-time match rates achievable, allowing accounts payable teams to focus on unmatched exceptions. B2BE also has solutions to manages expense invoices, no purchase order or goods receipt, across wide geographic areas or complex business structures.

Web EDI

Many hardware and building suppliers cannot support an EDI solution, or do not have the infrastructure to do so. However, B2BE’s Web Trader allows supply chain partners to trade electronically without needing to use a full-scale EDI solution. B2BE’s Web Trader is highly modular, allowing companies to run different process models and document sets for suppliers within your supply network. It enables configurable process models for different functional requirements, rules and validation in one simple interface meaning suppliers can trade electronically with their customers.

Web Portal

B2BE’s Web Portal solution gives hardware and building companies the ability to configure the look and feel of their own Web Portal to emulate their company’s own specific brand. The Web Portal solutions are preconfigured with best practice to speed up implementation and supply chain processes, workflows and visibility so all supply chain partners can operate collaboratively.

Document Distribution

When your organisation can distribute all your documents, particularly invoices, electronically no matter how the end customer needs them, it gives your organisation greater levels of flexibility. Many ‘man in van’ organisations still like to receive invoices in hard copy, some even fax. Whatever the route B2BE can automate this for you so you don’t need to worry and you have the flexibility to change methods quickly and easily.

Helping your hardware & building supply chain thrive

Supplier and customer on-boarding

With any B2BE Document Management solution and particularly one that incorporates EDI B2BE can support your customer or supplier integration requirements with our managed on-boarding services so your organisation can focus on the industry and not on the technical low-level, meaning you can trade electronically more rapidly and benefit faster from reductions in costs when you move to electronic documents.

Diversity of product management

As the hardware and building industry buys and sells a diverse range of products it means the way buyer's buy and seller's sell will always cause issues. Timber, for example is sold in lengths meters and packs or volume. This means electronic data isn't always going to be smooth sailing so B2BE has a number of workflow solutions to help ease the variations between buyer and seller without impacting on the benefits of electronic trading.

Visibility and control

Using B2BE's visibility and reporting tools, available via the Web Portal, you can collaboratively work with customers more easily or your suppliers. Self-fulfilment means suppliers can manage more without needing to speak to customers and each function within your business is independent and autonomous.

100% electronic supply chain

Whether you're a buyer or seller within the hardware and building industry B2BE can automate any document between buyers and suppliers so it means hard copy documents for you are a thing of the past.