Seems like today, given the fact just about everyone has a mobile phone (including the four-year-old my daughter played with today; granted it was a hand-me down from the parents, but it still worked!), that supply chain executives would want to access pertinent data away from their desks, while out and about and on the move.

It appears, based on ec-bp.org’s recent survey of SaaS-based solutions for EDI and supply chains, that there’s some trepidation about software-as-a-service. So much so that more than half (56 percent) of the survey respondents said they aren’t comfortable using SaaS for their ERP services, and almost half (45 percent) said they aren’t comfortable with SaaS for their supply chains. Read more...

Organizations may think solutions that link newer SaaS-based EDI systems to their back-end systems are too incomplete. Work still needs to be done, but there are options. EDI paved the way for the standard, real-time exchange of business documents, such as purchase orders, ASNs, bills of lading and more. But the traditional platforms on which EDI transactions—the Value Added Networks—are being overshadowed by Internet technologies such as Software-as-a-Service (Saas).