When I first joined Lightwell, I was struck by how everyone discusses "onboarding." What was this magical and mystical thing? Why was it discussed in such reverential tones? Having analyzed this further, I'm still a little mystified as to why the hush tones but I'll put a few words down here about what I consider onboarding to consist of and why it's as much a human process as a technical challenge.

It's clear that onboarding of partners is where much time is spent in a B2B system. That's why business people consider it a large factor in their projects. Not only that, but I've found that the more technical people discuss onboarding related to the technical aspect only. Whereas, in my opinion, a lot of the onboarding process is actually about human interaction.

In this post, I'll discuss what B2B trading partner onboarding is and then why I consider it to be as much a human process as a technical one.

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How Simplifying Trading Partner Onboarding Generates Many Surprising Competitive Advantages

The average enterprise’s B2B trading community includes hundreds of trading partners and requires IT support for managing a wide variety of connections, protocols, and formats. Unfortunately, when it comes to setting up and managing trading partners, many companies are still hobbling along with cumbersome, error-prone manual processes.

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If you aren’t already leveraging cognitive technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) in your business network, you may be missing out on critical supply chain improvements.

Cognitive and AI systems use natural language processing and machine learning to understand, reason, learn about and analyze all types of data. Also, they can interact with users in a more natural, conversational manner.

For B2B networks and supply chains, these capabilities can be leveraged for a wide variety of improvements including:

• Providing greater visibility and insight—from high level to granular detail
• Enabling split-second decision making based on the best data available
• Increasing awareness of critical issues
• Suggesting the best courses of action 
• Fostering collaboration among departments and partners

With these capabilities like these, you can plan for (or avoid) disruptions, proactively handle potential issues with suppliers, and ensure you can meet or exceed customer expectations (among many other benefits). Let’s take a closer look at some of the AI and cognitive capabilities available for B2B operations and supply chains today.

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IBM Interconnect 2017 is just around the corner, and we're excited to reconnect with many of our friends, customers, and partners while attending the event in Las Vegas next week.

If you're going to be there, we hope you'll add this session to your agenda. During this session, three speakers from AmerisourceBergen, a leading global healthcare solutions company, will describe their journey to achieving their EDI vision. It's a great B2B Integration success story, and we're thrilled to be presenting alongside them.

Read on for details—we hope to see you there!

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