B2B Data Integration and Transformation Blog

As with many other industries, COVID-19 has had an impact on the food and beverage supply chain. Demand for non-perishable products is up, and people are concerned about food shortages. Additionally, workers in the meatpacking sector have been catching the virus at a high rate, leading to pauses in production.

Last week’s installment our series on challenges for supply chains in the post-pandemic era, New Rules for New Tools,explained why last century’s integration tools can’t deliver the immediate visibility and versatility to the teams who design and maintain the data exchange and communication workflows that undergird today’s supply chains.

One of COVID-19’s dubious accomplishments is disrupting the global supply chain. There are some obvious effects to this disruption: factories have been shut down, goods aren’t making it to customers on time, and companies are struggling to meet customer demand.

Last week, we shared with subscribers a fuller discussion around one of the five enduring lessons for the future of supply chain management post Covid-19 in Time To Fix What’s Broken. Where the previous installment in our series explored the pain and risks of relying on last century’s EDI and integration tools, this post will explain strategies and tools built for commerce in a century marked by sudden, sweeping disruption and changing demand patterns that demand agility and speed from companies who want to remain relevant.

The Challenge

PBI-Gordon Corporation markets and sells its products through distributors and retailers. As the company grew, it needed a more powerful, enterprise-level EDI solution to simplify management of a large and diverse community of business partners, including some of the world’s largest retail distributors. PBI-Gordon Corporation chose OpenText/Inovis BizLink.