Gaithersburg, MD — June 3, 2008 — GXS, a provider of business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce solutions, today announced the results of a recent survey conducted in the company's booth at the SAPPHIRE 2008 Orlando conference in which 95 percent of respondents reported they trade electronically with less than half of their customer base.
In addition, 61 percent indicated that they trade electronically with less than 10 percent of their suppliers. The findings, according to GXS, demonstrate an opportunity for further growth and deployment of external B2B integration initiatives.
More than half of the 60 respondents reported that they are planning to upgrade or consolidate their SAP solution-based systems, demonstrating the greater emphasis placed on internal integration projects, despite the additional cost savings, customer satisfaction and supply chain efficiency benefits to be gained through electronic B2B integration.
"The benefits of electronic B2B integration have been demonstrated in countless reports and actual case studies, but yet many companies still have not introduced basic automation among their customers and business partners," commented Joe King, senior vice president of sales at GXS. "GXS works with thousands of companies to help them automate their supply chain, but it is clear from this survey that there are still thousands more who are encumbered by manual processes and lack visibility into their supply chain operations. The effects of this include increased costs, slower order-to-cash cycles, increased carbon footprint and diminished customer service."
Key findings from the survey include:
- 73 percent of respondents trade electronically with less than 30 percent of their supplier base;
- 72 percent trade electronically with less than 30 percent of their customer base;
- 55 percent trade electronically with less than 10 percent of their customer base; and
- 37 percent identified "improving B2B integration capabilities" as a top priority for their supply chain.
GXS recently announced its SAP Certified Integration status for GXS Trading Grid, the goal of which is to ease the integration of customers' external business partner transactions with their internal enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.
