What is 100% supply chain digitalization and how can I achieve it with TIE Kinetix?

What is digitalization?

No matter your position in the supply chain⁠—buyer or supplier⁠—you have achieved 100% supply chain digitalization when you have completely eliminated the use of paper in your business transactions. Invoices, purchase orders, order responses, you name it; everything is sent and/or received electronically.

Digitalization is not to be confused with digitization, which still at least partly relies on paper and/or email exchanges (e.g., scan and capture solutions). To briefly summarize, digitization solutions are temporary fixes while digitalization solutions will carry your business into the future. You can read more about the digitalization vs. digitization topic here. 

How can you achieve 100% digitalization as a buyer?

Our FLOW platform enables buyers to achieve 100% digitalization by stimulating the entire supply chain ecosystem. With FLOW, you're not limited to exchanging EDI/XML documents with the business partners that are already capable of doing so. Instead, you can exchange documents electronically with all partners, regardless of size, by giving your suppliers the option to choose one of the options below:

• EDI-2-FLOW, direct connection for EDI-enabled partners
• PDF-2-FLOW, similar to Dropbox for mid-size partners
• PORTAL-2-FLOW, online EDI (manual entry) for small partners

We'll work with you to develop a custom project plan with milestones, delivery dates, risk assessments, and so on.

How can you achieve 100% digitalization as a supplier?

As a supplier, you have the eternal struggle of meeting all of your customers' unique document exchange requirements. At some point, it becomes unmanageable and you need to invest in an automation solution to streamline your business processes. That's where we come in. 

If you're in a situation in which all of your customers are capable of exchanging documents electronically (and also require you to do so), then 100% digitalization is right around the corner with the help of EDI-2-FLOW, our fully integrated EDI/XML solution based in our cloud-native FLOW platform. 

But because your customers are typically the ones calling the shots, it may not always be an option to exchange all of your documents electronically. In that case, we can't offer you 100% digitalization, but we can get you as close as possible⁠⁠⁠—let's say 75-90% digitalization depending on your needs⁠—by helping you to meet all of your customers' unique requirements and enabling you to exchange EDI/XML documents with the customers that are capable of doing so. 

Click here to learn more about FLOW or request a demo here.