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New Trends in the Supply Chain
Preparing for real-time transactions
John Garrould
RIBA – June 7th 2010
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Preparing for Real-time Transactions
Agenda:1. Case Study Bertline 10 EPoS & Bertrams.com2. Why move to real-time transactions?3. Web Services4. Preparation – stage 1 – get your architecture right5. Preparation – stage 2 – get your infrastructure right6. Our vision of a real-time world7. Conclusion
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Case Study: Bertline 10 EPoS Bookshop Management System
• Bertline 301 was created over 10 years ago to replace Buyline and to encourage independent bookstore to trade efficiently using EDI, since then we have released updates every year.
• Installed in over 350 bookstore
• Bertline 10 – Launched last week
• New User Interface
• Includes free EPoS module
• Sage integration
• Multi Store / Chain support
• Open platform supports BIC Web Services, EDI, Batch, PubEasy, Bookfind Online, Teleordering etc…
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Case Study: Bertrams trade websites
• Websites for trade customers, libraries and suppliers• Open API based on BIC standards open to all customers• New features released every month
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Why move to real-time transactions?
The batch EDI method (asynchronous)
Construct Message Send into network Routing / Storage Delivery
Construct EDI Order
Transmit to MailboxExtract from Mailbox
Process OrderConstruct EDI Ack
Transmit to Mailbox
Extract from Mailbox
Process Ack
Cascade?
Min 60 sec Max 1 day Avg 120 min
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Why move to real-time transactions?
The real-time Web Service method (synchronous) Hello, do you have ….
Yes, would you like to order it?
Yes please
It will be with you tomorrow morning.
Price & Availability Enquiry <1 second
Place Order
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Why move to real-time transactions?
•Real-time allows us to focus on the transaction and not the file transfer.
•Transactions should become as simple as subroutine or method calls, rather than complex batch file transfers.
Stock := getAvailableStock(‘9781234567891’);
rs := doSearch(“T:Harry Potter”);
•Younger staff brought up on texting, MSN, Facebook, Twitter and other instant messaging platforms are already turning their backs on e-mail and will not tolerate the speed of legacy EDI interchanges as they become influential in organizations.
•EDI served us well but we can all do better.
•Real-time Web Services open up a whole new set of possibilities and will enable richer more powerful applications.
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Why move to real-time transactions?
Real-time enables composite applicationsThe search results page from Bertline 10 integrates the search results from the BookDataOnline Web Service API with the Bertrams.com Price & Availability API and data from the local shop database to show the availability of the titles in real-time.
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Why move to real-time transactions?
Real-time enables new processes1. Bertline 10 uses the BIC P&A Web Service to allow stores in the
same account to view each others stock.
2. Use Case 1: Stores in neighbouring towns can see each others stock holding and transfer stock between branches.
3. Use Case 2: A Head Office Buyer can use Bertline to check stock levels of a title across the chain in real-time.
4. This uses the BIC P&A Web Service and the Bertline Ping Web Service.
Bertrams Ping Web Service
Beccles
Authenticates and sends IP address
Receives IP addresses of other branches
Southwold
Authenticates and sends IP address
Receives IP addresses of other branches
Do you have X in stock?
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Why move to real-time transactions?
Real-time enables new processes• Bertline 10 uses the BIC Order List and Order Status web services to synchronize the
stores PO database to automatically create orders placed outside of Bertline 10.
• Orders may be placed outside of Bertline for example directly on Bertrams.com, rep visits, PubEasy, Call Bertie, Customer Services etc.
• With Bertline 301 orders created outside of Bertline had to be keyed in manually before they could be received.
• Bertline 10 now syncs with Bertrams using the BIC web services to automatically create purchase orders.
Bertrams SOPBertline 10
Check list for any orders which don’t exist in local database.
Get Order List
Get Order (x)
Create PO in Bertline
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Why move to real-time transactions?
• Lower cost / Faster customer implementations. With EDI projects can take weeks and consume days of IT support time.
• With SOAP & REST we’re there to support and answer questions but most just customers just read the documentation and integrate without ever speaking to the helpdesk.
• Customers validate their own messages against the BIC XML Schema.
• The Bertrams.com API is open to any customer with a user id and password for the website. No IT time required to enable a new customer.
• Everything a customer needs is available as an API e.g. P&A, Ordering, Order Cancellation, Returns, Invoices etc
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Existing Web Service Standards
• BIC have published a full set of web services standards and they are now working on CDF message standards.
• Price & Availability • Order• Order Cancellation• Order List• Order Status• Get Financial Document List• Get Financial Document• Post Financial Document• Returns Request• Returns ASN• Get Onix / MARC record• Backorder Report• Backorder Release
• CDF Order• CDF Request Despatch
Authority • CDF POST Authority • CDF Invoice / Credit• CDF Despatch Confirmation
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Preparation 1 – Get your architecture right
Example: Bertrams.com Web Site, Bertrams.com API, BertPub and BertramLibraryServices.com, Call Bertie, EDI, AS2, PubEasy……
CMS Multi Media Services
BiblioData Services
P&A Security Customer Supplier Order Book
CRM
JDE ORACLE FINANCIALS
SOPS BUSINESS LOGIC
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Preparation 1 – Get your architecture right
• You need to commit to a policy of building a portfolio of reusable software assets.
• The first few projects will take longer and cost more but as you start to reuse software assets development costs come down and time to market is reduced.
• For example don’t just build a website build the portfolio of components and then assemble the website from these components.
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Preparation 2 – Get your infrastructure right
• It’s easy to predict the number of requests for financial transactions like Orders but you can’t predict the number of requests for things like P&A?
• You need to make sure that your solution has excellent availability and can be scaled up quickly at low incremental cost.
• Plan to use caching technologies to protect your production systems from the full external load.
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Preparation 2 – Get your infrastructure right
• Consider using commodity open source software for the web tier and commodity hardware.
• Try to find a way to scale at low cost so you can maximize your investment in the business application rather than infrastructure.
• Consider virtualization and cloud based hosting eg Amazon EC2
• Put in management and governance controls to monitor who is using what, when and how much and to check you are hitting response time SLA’s.
• Provide customers with good documentation and examples.
• Make sure you are compatible with the BIC standards.
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Our Vision : A joined up real-time supply chain
Bertline 10EPoS
BertWebAPI
Bertrams SOP Business Logic
All Major UK Distributors
Real-time ServiceAggregators
BookData / PubEasy / ANO
Medium / Small UK & International Suppliers
A customer using any of our systems should not have to wait more than 1 second to place an order and know that the stock has been reserved either at the wholesaler or the distributor and be advised of the delivery date.
1 Se
cond
Max
imum
Wai
t
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Why move to real-time transactions?
Summary:
• Instant results can take a day or more off the lead-time.
• Real-time seem like natural speech and encourages adoption.
• The speed facilitates the automation of processes beyond EDI.
• Enables rich composite applications
• Lowers implementation costs
• Lowers operational cost
What Next:
• Talk to Bertrams – we’ll help you implement and test P&A, Ordering and Cancellations etc
• Talk to your other customers to see how they could benefit from real-time processing
