The age-old issue of trust rears its head once again as the hosted supply chain model allows—and encourages—enterprises to let their suppliers and customers look behind their collective firewalls. According to Noha Tohamy, Forrester Research supply chain and pricing solutions analyst, most companies feel that multienterprise integration is the only way that they can improve their supply chains “but when the rubber meets the road, companies are very cautious about what information they will share with their trading partners, and certainly what, if any, type of integration they are willing to have directly between their and their partners’ systems.” Ranga Jayaraman, CIO of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, agrees that these issues must be smoothed out before the real benefits of supply chain integration can be realized. “The trust between companies has to be there,” Jayaraman says. One way to decide how far to go with suppliers and customers is to analyze the nature of the partnership and make some hard decisions. Is it a small supplier that you can afford to lose?—in which case you might consider dropping it rather than getting stuck dealing with its manual entry work—or is it your most important supplier?—in which case you may do everything short of paying its monthly bills to get it to use your hosted service. Is the supplier’s facility totally dedicated to your company, or does it supply other customers from which it draws higher margins on its products?—in which case it may be more resistant to your blandishments.For example, Imperial Sugar VP and CIO George Muller is trying to help one of Imperial’s biggest customers get up and running on some basic EDI transactions (as well as with its SAP rollout), which will lessen manual work for both companies and lay the foundation for an integrated supply chain with Imperial in the future. Because this is such an important customer for Imperial, Muller says he’s putting in the hours and providing his expertise for his customer’s benefit, doing everything he can to make it work. If the customer were not so important, Muller might not be extending himself to that extent. Related content brandpost Sponsored by Huawei Beyond gigabit: the need for 10 Gbps in business networks Interview with Liu Jianning, Vice President of Huawei's Data Communication Marketing & Solutions Sales Dept By CIO Online Staff Nov 30, 2023 9 mins Cloud Architecture Networking brandpost Sponsored by SAP Generative AI’s ‘show me the money’ moment We’re past the hype and slick gen AI sales pitches. Business leaders want results. By Julia White Nov 30, 2023 5 mins Artificial Intelligence brandpost Sponsored by Zscaler How customers capture real economic value with zero trust Unleashing economic value: Zscaler's Zero Trust Exchange transforms security architecture while cutting costs. By Zscaler Nov 30, 2023 4 mins Security brandpost Sponsored by SAP A cloud-based solution to rescue millions from energy poverty Aware of the correlation between energy and financial poverty, Savannah Energy is helping to generate clean, competitively priced electricity across Africa by integrating its old systems into one cloud-based platform. By Keith E. Greenberg, SAP Contributor Nov 30, 2023 5 mins Digital Transformation Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe