Transform Your Data to Transform Your Business

B2B value chains have always been complicated webs of different data types and standards. During the past few years, however, complexity has increased dramatically, with staggering levels of data growth and the deployment of innovative new IT initiatives, such as cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), social media and big data analytics.

Companies must now manage and support ever-changing data standards and formats across hundreds or even thousands of partners around the world. They must deal with regulatory requirements that shift between industries and regions. They must also address IT needs for speed, cost efficiencies and greater visibility into standards exchange and transformation processes.

Legacy point solutions and custom-coded solutions can’t deal with the complexity of today’s environment. They create silos that limit flexibility and consume unnecessary IT resources. By taking a uniform, centralized and automated approach to standards processing, organizations can dramatically reduce complexity while also lowering costs and simplifying processes for employees, partners and customers.

Leveraging Universal Data Transformation
With universal data transformation technology, particularly the IBM Transformation Extender, organizations can achieve automated any-to-any transformation of standards-based data across the entire partner ecosystem.

Universal data transformation enables organizations to achieve seamless data movement between the company and all of its partners, no matter what location or industry. It also allows organizations to maintain centralized command and control, with extensibility across a broad range of use cases.

By embracing a universal transformation model, organizations can significantly strengthen their B2B capabilities through the ability to:

• Easily manage and adapt to changing industry standards, thus easing the burden on IT and compliance teams and accelerating performance across the partner ecosystem.
• Access, validate and transform large volumes of data quickly and efficiently. This not only simplifies collaboration, but also reduces costs and eliminates potential bottlenecks.
• Access data directly from source applications, thereby improving data integrity and throughput.
• Aggregate disparate data to provide new business information views and services This will help companies support digital transformation by leveraging initiatives such as big data analytics, social networking and the IoT.
• Reuse transformation assets for consistency and scalability without the need for custom coding.

How the Business Benefits from Universal Data Transformation
Universal data transformation technologies and processes have emerged as valuable assets for companies modernizing their B2B value chains. Universal data transformation positions organizations for the future and delivers significant business value immediately, including:

• Revenue growth through better customer fulfillment, satisfaction and retention, along with increased productivity and speed to market.
• Risk reduction through improved processes for regulatory compliance, auditability and governance.
• Cost savings by minimizing manual paper-based processes and eliminating multiple infrastructure solutions.
• Operational efficiency through end-to-end value chain visibility, troubleshooting and remediation.
• Support for digital transformation and innovation with universal data transformation that enhances agility across the entire B2B ecosystem.

Conclusion
Industry standards are intended to simplify the exchange of data between organizations. However, with ever-shifting data standards and formats, along with larger and broader value chains, the simplicity promised by standardization has actually become a new source of B2B complexity.

By embracing technologies and processes that support universal data transformation, organizations can eliminate that complexity and receive a host of benefits, including lower costs, lower risk, operational efficiencies, and a more agile and flexible value chain.

For more information on how IBM can enhance your organization’s B2B integration transformation and standardization, please visit https://www-01.ibm.com/software/commerce/b2b/b2b-integration/gateways.