This is due to a variety of business pressures such as rising costs, global competition, the need for reduced cycle times, etc. Working in a multi-enterprise supply chain world requires bi-directional electronic connectivity (referred to as process integration in our research), as well as process collaboration to succeed.

Process collaboration is an advanced stage of process integration which includes not just data transfer but also includes business processes that span the collaborating enterprises.

In this webcast Nari Viswanathan, Director of Supply Chain Planning for Aberdeen research, will share the results of the just released study highlighting the Best Practices in deploying your partner facing systems and the profiles of the companies that have achieved quantifiable business results, as well as those who have not.

Survey results show that the firms enjoying Best-in-Class performance shared a variety of common characteristics (Chapter 2), including the following:

• 2 times as likely to have stronger capabilities in collaborating with suppliers and customers 2 times as likely to have ability to support unique business processes for selective product categories, customers or channels
• 1.5 times as likely to look at process integration and collaboration in a holistic approach rather than in a siloed manner.
• 4 times as likely to have enhanced visibility into the performance of business processes

Best-in-Class companies are ahead in terms of both Process Integration (data connectivity) as well as Process Collaboration (enabling business processes across multiple enterprises) as compared to All Others.

In this webcast you will learn how to address these business collaboration challenges:

• Increasing number of value chain partners and increasing demand for changes to existing trading relationships
• Decreasing margins and rising costs of "business as usual"
• Increasing need to respond and adapt rapidly to dynamic market conditions
• Improve all aspects of customer interactions including accuracy, timeliness, and collaboration vs."send and receive"