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Enterprises Work Smarter, Faster with New Generation of MFT

Kyle Parris
Director of Product Management
nuBridges

In my blog last week, I promised that I’d share some specific, real-world examples of how enterprises are benefitting from the new generation of Managed File Transfer (MFT) solutions. And I will. But first I want to share some insights we’ve gained from speaking with a number of organizations recently.

We’ve learned that MFT solutions are significantly improving and streamlining the way these enterprises are exchanging critical information inside and outside their organization.  Several enterprises noted that they’re now able to more quickly and “intelligently” respond to business events and market conditions, helping them make smarter, faster decisions. We’ve also learned that top line and bottom line results are being positively impacted by improved order-to-fulfillment processes; reduced charge-backs and returns; and improved invoice-to-cash cycles.

As promised, here are a few real-world examples that illustrate how these benefits translate into business value:

• A regional hospital system is improving revenue cycle management by eliminating billing errors, creating clean claims and streamlining billing operations across its network.
• A multi-national pharmaceutical company is sharing clinical studies to speed up the FDA-approval process, providing faster product-to-market cycles and generating revenue faster.
• With its MFT solution, a large fulfillment operation is reducing inventory discrepancies, reducing costs associated with picking errors, improving invoice payment cycles and ensuring optimal distribution of manufactured products.
• A global computer retailer is driving efficiency in its customer order-to-fulfillment processes by effectively responding to bottlenecks through notifications that drive action and inform customers about order delays. In this case, a best-in-class MFT solution is helping the retailer drive more efficiency through real-time measuring and monitoring activities.
• One of the world’s largest retailers is exchanging purchase orders, invoices and other business-critical documents with more than 15,000 global suppliers to reduce the order-to-cash cycle.

Care to share how MFT helped your bottom line? We’d love to hear from you.

Until next week,

Kyle

PS... To help enterprises analyze the solutions that are currently available, nuBridges presents a discussion of the key best practices that define enterprise-class Managed File Transfer solutions.  Request a copy of the White Paper, "Best Practices in Managed File Transfer Solutions" today. 

Savvy Enterprises See MFT as a Strategic Requirement

Kyle Parris
Director of Product Management
nuBridges

We’re seeing Managed File Transfer (MFT) solutions being embraced by savvy global enterprises that recognize the business value of investing in what is increasingly being viewed as an infrastructure requirement. Today’s extended enterprise needs to share information internally across departments, divisions and acquisitions. It also needs to share information externally with customers, suppliers, business partners and with online collaborative communities.

These enterprises are telling us that the new generation of MFT solutions is providing numerous benefits on both sides of the business partner equation – supply and demand. For example, MFT is providing them with an opportunity to speed business cycles, improve responsiveness to market conditions and remove barriers to doing business electronically on a global scale.

Let’s look at some specific benefits:

• Real-time business partner collaboration and business application integration
• System-to-system and person-to-person file transfers
• Visibility into all file transfers
• Integration of critical back-end business applications with file transfers
• Best practices in governance, risk management and compliance
• Real-time issue/problem detection, resulting in speedy resolutions and avoidance of supply chain disruptions
• Timely decision making, reporting and analytics

We’d really like to hear about the benefits your enterprise is reaping from MFT.

You’ll want to read next week’s nuBlog, where we’ll tell you about several real-world examples of how extended enterprises are translating these benefits into bottom-line business results.

Until next week,

Kyle

More about Why Enterprises are Investing in a New Generation of Managed File Transfer

Kyle Parris
Director of Product Management
nuBridges

We received a number of emails in response to last week’s blog. Thanks to all of you who responded. Having said that, we’d really like you to use the comment feature of nuBlog, so all of our readers can share in your insights!

Your emails pointed out several other challenges that you’re facing with current file transfer solutions. Challenges that you’re asking the MFT vendors you’re considering to address. Let’s take a look at these:

“We’re looking for a strategic partner; a partner that can bring new functionality to the MFT solution as we grow. In fact, as we research vendors, we see the strategic partnership relationship every bit as important as the software itself.”

“Managing our trading community is a headache. Is there an MFT solution that could help us push partner provisioning out to the community?”

“The IT folks that handle our company’s file transfers have been turned into de facto shipping and receiving clerks, spending lots of time each day manually processing files for delivery. Constantly checking on file deliveries. Help!”

Thanks for your emails. Next week we’ll move away from the challenges and discuss how best-in-class MFT solutions can solve your file transfer headaches.

Until next week,

Kyle

Why are enterprises investing in a new generation of managed file transfer?

Kyle Parris
Director of Product Management
nuBridges

The answers to this question can be as varied as the global enterprises that are investing in managed file transfer (MFT) solutions.  But what we’ve found over the last six months in researching the market and speaking with dozens of global enterprises that are planning to replace a jumble of file transfer solutions with MFT, is that the answers can be grouped into three broad categories:

√   “We’ve outgrown our current solution(s).” In asking for specific examples, we found a number of trends:

• We are starting to move too many files, or files are becoming too large to transfer quickly, reliably and securely
• As our business expands, we need to collaborate with more business partners; each requesting a different protocol, or encryption method
• Our current solution doesn’t track or monitor file movements, so it doesn’t help at audit time
• We need scheduled, event-triggered and ad hoc file transfer capabilities that our point solution just doesn’t offer
• We have multiple platforms, but our current solution only supports <enter your favorite platform here>
• We need to integrate ERP applications into our file transfer solution, but our current solution doesn’t handle this

√  “The costs of managing and supporting multiple file transfer applications are staggering.”  Common themes were that enterprises are incurring major costs due to:

• Keeping the administrative and support teams trained on multiple solutions
• Lack of economies of scale in licensing and maintenance costs
• File transfer workflow inefficiencies resulting in wasted time, expense and errors associated with manual file transfers

√ “The risks associated with lack of control over file transfers keeps me up at night.” What we learned is that enterprises are equally concerned about data breaches, non-compliance with applicable regulations and laws and loss of critical business documents.

All three seem to be top of mind with the folks we’ve been talking with recently.

How about you? Are you considering a move to the new generation in managed file transfer? If so, please let our readers know what’s driving your decision making.

Until next week,

Kyle

What’s driving the resurgence of Managed File Transfer / B2B Gateways?

Gary Palgon
Vice President, Product Management
nuBridges

While the trend for businesses to connect electronically with trading partners has grown steadily over the past two decades – first via point-to-point connections followed by a single B2B Gateway or central hub, little or no effort was focused on creating similar exchanges within enterprises.  Yes, application integration was taking place, but control or centralization of file transfers wasn’t even close to being on the radar screen.

But that’s definitely been changing over the last eighteen months, much in part to security as a driver.

Companies of all sizes are revisiting their B2B file transfers to make sure that their external connections are secure, and centralizing them into a single gateway to allow for control and visibility.  This helps with compliance to security mandates as well.  Gartner recently released their Magic Quadrant for B2B Gateway Providers (link to: http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/microsoft/vol3/article3/article3.html) outlining key requirements and vendors to consider when addressing this.

And on the internal front, the same is taking place to secure file transfers within the four walls of the enterprise, often to lock-down credit card information, other personally identifiable information (PII) and sensitive business data.  Gartner also recently released their Magic Quadrant for Managed File Transfer (link to: http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?id=703819) outlining the same for the internal view. 

And while there are definitely differences between the two, there are many areas of overlap as well. 

Let’s start talking about this – is a centralized managed file transfer gateway on the radar screen at your company?  Is the primary focus internal or external?  Is security the main driver behind the initiative?