Publishing Supply Chain Management
Booking in your next automation solution
Publishing and book sales have had a resurgence over the latter years which means more transactions, more bookshops, online sales and ultimately more documents to manage within the supply chain. B2BE’s supply chain solutions and experience in the publishing industry has given B2BE a wealth of knowledge to be able to better service this diverse industry and the different channels to market.
Channels to market
The publishing industry is made-up of many global publishers and thousands of book shops that run multiple systems and who have different levels of system requirements and capabilities. In some markets distributors also distribute on behalf of the publisher.
Online sales through any number of market places has also grown with both publishers selling directly into the channel as well as book shops so the end consumer has a lot of choice and retailers, distributors and publishers need to manage all this from a supply chain perspective which adds complexity to support.
Product identification
The publishing industry has a very specific range of identification codes, ISBN numbers, which identify their products, buyers, and sellers. This means that documents, electronic or otherwise, use these unique codes and identifiers as well as more traditional identifiers, such as EANs and GLN numbers, the latter particularly to carry out electronic trading. This ensures unique product but adds to product SKU content and maintenance and differing electronic requirements in different markets.
Book returns
The publishing industry supports an approach where books need to be purchased in advance, either based on recommendations or book shop / publisher estimates. This means that book shops can also return stock after a defined period if it hasn't been sold. This adds to the industry’s complexity at a physical and transactional level.
SME market
The different channels to market does add complexity but most of the publishing industry are small to medium enterprises. That is, mum and dad businesses who have a range of point of sale systems that aren't always easy to integrate to and require buy in from the software supplier to enable EDI trading so uptake at this level isn't always easy or straightforward.
Solutions for publishing industry
EDI
Whether it’s the publisher trading with distributors, retailers or market places such as Amazon all the corners can be connected through B2BE’s EDI network. Many distributors and publishers also have different channels other than the bookshops such as large retail chains. These chains usually also have compliance requirements where EDI is mandatory and they have compliance processes which B2BE support.
Pacstream Marketplace
Book shops can send EDI sales orders which are routed and sent to the publishers for shipment seamlessly without the bookshop needing to manually create a purchase order.
Similarly the publishers can send electronic documents in response such as invoices.
Web Portal
No matter the end-point of a document or where a document was sent from the Web Portal instantly provides your business users access and visibility to these to help share and disseminate information better. Using a Document Management solution also means you can incorporate a number of workflows to aid with electronic trading.
Helping your publishing supply chain to thrive
Realtime trading
The utilisation of real time information, data and documents improves responsiveness while avoiding physical documents will also reduce the publishing industries carbon footprint which has become a sensitive issue across the world.
Automation
In simple terms B2BE's solutions are all designed to help automate the publishing supply chain. Offering solutions that means publishers can deal with their customers easily and electronically. Either B2BE's EDI network solution will get you there or you can join the Pacstream community, or use both.
Visibility
Book stores, distributors and publishers all need visibility to be efficient and to ensure that all your electronic documents are visible and visible to the right people. Whether it's internal staff bookshops or distributors, B2BE's visibility tools helps with all this so you can offer self service support which in turn reduces time and effort for staff to manage.
