By Michel Berger, President — ForeFront

Recent worldwide crises significantly disrupted supply chains, and manufacturers have had to rethink sourcing practices, build-to-order demands, and production cost controls, among other risk factors tied to global logistics disruption. Manufacturers’ ability to respond to these risks is constrained by their Supply Chain Management (SCM) systems, which continue to be expensive to run, too rigid and often reliant on legacy technologies.

Manufacturers and their SCM partners need a shared digital logistics platform to facilitate B2B commerce and navigate through today’s persistent unpredictability. This marketplace platform, envisioned as fully integrated with Salesforce clouds capabilities, would offer centralized and timely SCM information management.

Requirements for Salesforce B2B Commerce Success

Successful outcome of the Salesforce B2B Commerce platform is contingent however on integration of legacy PIM (Product Information Management), 3PL (third-party logistics) and ERP systems (SAP, Oracle, Infor, Epicor et al) – an area at which ForeFront excels, using Mulesoft.

Furthermore, manufacturers’ buy-in into the B2B Commerce platform is driven by clearly offering insights to their supply operations and client demands, more accurate product cost accounting, and, not the least, tangible value to the bottom line.

As part of our Salesforce B2B Commerce solutions for global manufacturers, ForeFront offers Asset-Based Commerce (ABC) accelerators.

One of them is Clipper, a sophisticated ABC cost tabulation engine. Clipper, an add-on to Salesforce B2B Commerce platform, enables a manufacturer to estimate the cost of a product variant when hundreds of sourcing and production variables need to be factored-in into its configuration and pricing.

Clipper Delivers a Digital Commerce Solution and Fast ROI

Our client, a Fortune 500 global manufacturer, is a market leader in packaging for top consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands, each with their own packaging variant needs. Clipper was deployed as part of a digital commerce transformation initiative focused cost-control governance and B2B customer pricing management.

In the last several years, our client incurred $15 million to $30 million in EBITDA loss annually. The manufacturer is an SAP ERP shop, and neither SAP nor Oracle, bidding for this project, could deliver our agile and seamless approach to complex variant pricing. Our solution replaces an end-of-life, unsecure spreadsheet-based system that will be decommissioned in 2023. Clipper is native to Salesforce, and the client’s projected ROI was less than 12 months.

To learn more about Clipper and our Asset-Based Commerce accelerators, contact Michel@forefrontcorp.com.