Building a community of 3rd Party Supply Chain partners with OmPrompt can be achieved very quickly and with a typical Return on Investment (RoI) of six months or less. Whether connecting with 3rd Party Carriers, Shippers, Logistics Service Providers, Co-Packers, Co-Manufacturers, Distributors, Financial Institutions, or Customs and Regulatory bodies the full range of efficient connectivity options are all available with OmPrompt.

Deciding the target community and then determining the agreed formats to be adhered to with the community is the primary consideration. Terms of Business may be enforced to dictate that the 3rd Party Community Members connect in a limited way, for example a given EDI standard. However, such a restriction could limit the ability to build and manage such a Community, therefore requiring that greater flexibility in terms of the number and type of agreed formats may need to be offered.

For example, a range of choices may need to be provided; such as multiple EDI or XML standards, spreadsheet, Word, PDF, fax, Web Portal, or SMS formats. In other circumstances it may be a mix between these two extremes whereby a short but flexible set of agreed formats is offered.

The formats decided, the extent of the Supply Chain messaging that the Enterprise wishes to exchange must be considered and brought into the design of the target OmPrompt enabled Community.

In some communities the message flows are limited to a one way flow of a single message, for example, an order. In others the messaging flows can be a lot more complex and interactive encompassing the entire order to cash process including tendering processes, ASNs, CMRs and PODs etc.

With more complex message flows often there is a requirement to introduce business logic in support of the business process with the 3rd Party Supply Chain Community. This logic could be as simple as some data validation or data cleansing but it could be as complex as concatenating multiple messages together, which arrive at separate times and from separate partners before setting in motion the next part of the automated process.

Only one connection or integration point is required to the Enterprise at the centre of the Community. This architecture significantly drives down the set-up cost and ongoing maintenance associated with multiple direct connections to each Community member. Any change to the Enterprise system that connects to the Community such as a system replacement or a system upgrade can be very efficiently managed as a result of such architecture.

Ensuring that all the members of the 3rd Party Supply Chain Community are connected in the first instance to the OmPrompt Messaging Platform and that they fully understand their requirements as a member of the Community is something that can either be managed 100% by OmPrompt, or 100% by the Enterprise in question or as a partnership between OmPrompt and the Enterprise in question where the responsibilities are clearly divided and understood. Ongoing management and maintenance can be approached in the same way.

Once the Community is connected, the messages are flowing and the Business Processes are fully integrated it is possible to implement a series of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which will monitor the Community and track performance to the target metrics. Such monitoring can show aggregate performance for the whole Community as well as individual performance for specific members or a specific member of the Community. Examples of such KPIs are:

• On time delivery

• On time in full

• Clean deliveries versus unclean

In addition to the monitoring of KPIs it is possible to introduce Alerts either at an aggregate or individual level in order to initiate a required interjection to the process once a KPI has not been reached or it is not being maintained. These Alerts can either be web based or email based or a combination of the two.