Online B2B, The Path to Follow...
By: Dave Oppenheim, Cessna Aircarft Co.
Reprinted from the eyeforaerospace.com website.
San Diego-August 14, 2001 - The leading Aerospace B2B supplier is still ESIS. They are a low profile, but highly successfulcompany that I have been working with for years-- Here at Cessna and at AlliedSignal - They have more than 15,000 suppliers who primarily serve the aerospace industry in their networkand hundreds of the major aerospace companies.
Why are the marketplaces failing? Their business model still tries to charge the supplier forsomething that is of benefit to the customer! And, from my standpoint, it is ludicrous to do thissince in the supply chain, all the costs come upstream as well, sooner or later. In addition, none except ESIS has either the technology or the knowledge to 'make it happen'. The "S" in "ASP" is Service, not Software.
From early 1993 through 1997, Cessna worked diligently to get their suppliers on traditional EDI. At the end of five years Cessna had accomplished putting 5% (70 out of 1400) of their suppliers on EDI using one transaction (electronic purchase order). This is typical for manufacturers. A survey in Sept. 2000 (Techweb News) showed that 66% of the companies they surveyed felt they would process less than 25% of their transactions within two years of installing e-procurement software. Only 10% felt they would do more then 50%.
In January 1998 Cessna outsourced its EDI translation, Mapping, Supplier enablement, day-to-day transaction handling, new transaction development, help desk and program management to ESIS and within 90 days connected over 1300 suppliers (92%) to Cessna via the web for ALL supply chain transactional documents, most of them interactive.
It is vital that you partner with a strong third party ASP who understands your industry/market's specialized data (regulatory, standards, data conventions) needs, and has a history of handling high traffic and maintains high service levels. ESIS IS the Aerospace commerce enabler.
You MUST Help small businesses be successful! Many of these failed dot.com businesses tried to make money off the transactions of small businesses! YOU MUST Make the solution totally free to your trading partners - you will get a wide scale adoption rate and take away all excuses. The benefits are in reducing your supply chain transaction costs and increasing your supply chains capabilities!
The ESIS solution provides a web solution while still supporting those companies that want to use EDI. Cessna provides value to its supply partners by providing free web services. How did we select our 3rd party provider ESIS? ESIS was compared to four other ASP companies on the merits of annual maintenance cost, development cost, service level and flexibility. ESIS has remained the lowest total cost provider in the Aerospace industry for at least five years, having captured over 15,000 Aerospace and other suppliers for Aerospace OEM's such as Boeing, AlliedSignal (Honeywell), Cessna, Sikorski, Bell Helicopter, Embr /air and many others.
Anyone interested in knowing more about Cessna's Supply Chain Strategy and our success story should read the Sept. 7th, 2000 issue of Purchasing Magazine or e-mail me.
Dave Oppenheim, CPM
dloppenheim@cessna.textron.com
About ESIS
ESIS Inc., founded in 1992, is a full-service e-commerce outsourcing provider for companies and their
trading partners. A leader in its field, ESIS counts over 17,000 e-commerce partners and 200+ major manufacturers
as users of its web-enabled application, the Harmony Order Management (HOM) System. The company offers a complete
suite of e-commerce application services to enable its customers to integrate their data without the expense of
developing new in-house applications and analysis programs. The HOM System allows for instant, value-added e-commerce
implementation and is designed for suppliers of any size. ESIS processes over 3.5 million transactions and over $6 billion
in purchase orders for its clients each year. ESIS customers include Boeing, Honeywell, Bell Helicopter, Cessna Aircraft,
and Embraer.