Product Description

Integrating business processes across organisations using Internet has become the way of doing business, with business-to-business (B2B) capability to support system to system, electronic document exchange now standard practice for many leading organisations.

Collaborating electronically with customers, suppliers, e-marketplaces and service providers offers businesses a faster, more accurate and cost-effective way of sharing information. While B2B integration has rapidly become part of the business fabric, the challenge for many organisations lies in developing and sustaining the underlying infrastructure.

B2B integration can be costly, complex, high risk and involve long lead times before a return on investment is realised. Investing directly in building and operating an in-house B2B integration solution requires a high level of technical sophistication, effort and investment, and is not a cost-effective option for most organisations.

Mincom Axis is a hosted B2B integration solution that is deployed as an organisation’s private e-Hub to provide integration from internal ERPs/Business Systems directly to trading partners, e-marketplaces, or other intermediaries. Because it is delivered as a hosted (outsourced) solution, Mincom Axis eliminates the need to invest in costly and complex in-house B2B integration infrastructure or to use expensive transaction fee based intermediaries. Mincom Axis is hosted by Mincom’s Managed Services division in the Mincom Data Centre.

Mincom Axis is an innovative solution, providing any organisation a deep, single point of integration from all internal business systems to trading partners while also providing the flexibility for the organisation to maintain control of all trading relationships. Mincom Axis is a complete, enterprise level solution that facilitates the exchange of any information, reliably and securely, via a wide range of Internet standards and protocols and in a variety of message standards, formats and industry standards.

Key Features

• Security – Fully secure integration, digital certificates, encryption and authentication

• Transformation – Multiple Document Formats are supported in a variety of open and industry standards, including XML, EDI, CSV, PDF and HTML

• Connectivity – Multiple Trading Channels are supported including HTTPS, SMTP, FTP, ebXML, AS2, Fax and Web Services

• Routing and Delivery – Reliable and guaranteed delivery mechanisms with multiple routing options

• Business Process Management – Specific, tailored processes for each trading partner

• Business Document Warehouse – Audit trail, re-try and re-send for full traceability of all transactions

• Monitoring and Tracking – End-to-end visibility of all transactions, browser based Remote Administration tools, automated alerts and error condition reporting

• Global Support – 24x7 international Call Centre

• ERP Integration – Connection Software (Mincom Axis Connect) and Adapters to support ERP and File Integration, including integration to major ERPs such as Mincom Ellipse, SAP, Oracle, JD Edwards and many others

• Trading Partner Reach – Support for non-Integrated Trading Partners via WebView, Email/PDF and Fax as well as comprehensive capabilities to integrate directly to Trading Partners.

Mincom Axis power and flexibility comes from:

Configurable business rules

Mincom Axis supports many different types of business rules to ensure customers B2B needs are met and their business processes enhanced through their use of B2B. The business rules can be implemented at many different levels within the solution:

• Mincom Axis client software – Mincom Axis Connect

• Mincom Axis Business Process Management Engine

• Mincom Axis mapping and transformation engine

• Mincom Axis Channel environment

• Mincom Axis WebView application

• Document formats such as PDF layouts

• Wide range of connectivity options

The Mincom Axis platform supports connectivity options ranging from the sophisticated standards such as AS2 and ebXML, various HTTPS options, FTP and Secure FTP with client and/or server support, right down to email with a PDF attachment and Fax.

Mincom Axis WebView enables the smallest organisation to participate in their customer’s eBusiness initiative. The WebView application requires only an Internet connection and minimal training. Organisations can receive their business documents and convert them into down stream supply chain documents such as receiving a Purchase Order and using it to create a Shipping Notice or Invoice. WebView is branded to appear as the Mincom Axis customer’s own Internet web application.

Mincom Axis Connect

Mincom Axis Connect is a lightweight, Java based client application that includes adapters to connect to business systems and a transport mechanism to connect to the hosted Mincom Axis Service. The adapters are built according to a defined interface and to date include integration to commercial ERP’s such as Mincom Ellipse, Oracle Applications and JD Edwards as well as legacy and in-house applications. Mincom Axis Connect can be deployed to a customer site or managed by Mincom as part of the overall B2B solution.

Mincom Axis speaks your language

Multi-national operation? No problems. Mincom Axis WebView is multi-language and currently available in Spanish and English. New languages are added as required.

Integrate Once, Connect to Anyone

Mincom Axis provides a single pipe between the hosted platform and the Mincom Axis customer. Once established, Mincom Axis customers can take advantage of the existing and easily configurable capabilities to quickly enable connections to any of their trading partners, regardless of the size or capability of that organisation.

Mincom Axis customers can standardise their business processes without having to be concerned about the capabilities of their Trading Partners.

Commercial Model

The Mincom Axis solution has a broad range of capabilities that may exceed the immediate requirements of an organisation. The commercial model of the solution allows customers to start small and expand when needed, without needing significant investment.

Innovation

Mincom Axis was conceived and developed in 2001 to meet a new business opportunity identified through use of the Internet. Some industries were developing global e-marketplaces for buying essential goods such as the Quadrem marketplace in the Mining and Metals industry. These sought to optimise procurement business processes by creating a marketplace for buyers and sellers to interact. In addition to marketplaces, organisations sought to improve their service to customers and integrate beyond their internal networks through the use of B2B document exchange. At this time, EDI was not new technology, however open, internet-based technologies were emerging to allow organisations to achieve the benefits of EDI without the need for costly Value Added Network (VAN) point-to-point technologies typically required for EDI.

Each individual organisation needed to solve the problem of how they could connect their business systems to their preferred e-marketplace, EDI VAN or direct trading partners. All parties would require a significant investment in B2B technology to enable them to trade electronically in a way that was safe, reliable and secure. Building and operating such an infrastructure was and is expensive, complex, difficult and high risk both to develop and implement and in ongoing maintenance and operation.

Mincom Axis was conceived as a fully managed, hosted solution to meet the needs of such organisations. Mincom Axis provides each customer with a private and complete B2B e-trading capability while sharing the technology, infrastructure, development and operational costs across a diverse customer base. The result is an innovative, state-of-the-art solution that can provide any company of any size with the latest in B2B integration. Mincom Axis also allows organisations to augment their business system functionality and hide its limitations through its innovative approach to providing integration options.

From its inception, Mincom Axis was designed to allow an individual organisation to have its own business rules, capabilities and trading partner connections – both from a technical and a commercial perspective. Mincom Axis is presented to its customers’ trading partners as though it is the customer’s own solution, while still bringing the expertise and capability of a fully managed solution.

Mincom Axis is built with Java using IBM technology and through the extensive use of WebSphere MQ Series has been architected to ensure there is guaranteed message delivery between all servers and applications – no transaction is lost. The original business process engine was an IBM commercial product and has since been upgraded to a Mincom designed and built application using IBM’s Websphere Application Server. All customers were migrated to the new solution without incident over a 12 month period. A key goal of the Mincom Axis architecture is to allow individual components to be upgraded and added without impacting the operation of the service itself. New functionality for customers is added daily without impacting other customers or their trading partners.

Performance

Mincom Axis has been used in a variety of ways by different customers to meet their business needs and improve their supply chain performance. As the platform is not limited to any particular business process, document type or collaborative integration need, the solutions are only limited by the requirements and vision of the organisations using the service.

Some examples of how Mincom Axis is currently used by customers:

• Transmission of all purchase orders to suppliers electronically to standardise internal business processes regardless of the capabilities of the supplier.

• Arm’s length Integration between Manufacturing and Distribution divisions within a single organisation (i.e. the distribution division buys from the manufacturing division).

• Integration between two applications residing on an internal network.

• As an eHub for a marketplace supporting ‘many-to-many’ connections for a range of document types.

• To enforce compliance to document standards through validation prior to acceptance of a business document.

• Providing required data (static and dynamic) that is not available from the sending business system.

• Complex business processes to raise alerts in the event of pre-set condition such as an email notification when a Purchase Order is changed or automated rejection of an invoice with additional charges of particular type.

• Customised reports based on the data held within Mincom Axis for use in data warehousing solutions.
  • Customised adapters to facilitate integration into legacy business systems.

• Specialised retry policies and alerts for mission critical documents that need to be successfully transmitted within in a 15 minute time frame.

• Document delivery and routing based on the information within the document itself to cater for limitations in business systems, such as emailing a Service order as a PDF attachment instead of as an integrated document.

Mincom Axis is currently used by customers all around the world in all time zones. In some cases documents are routed through multiple countries before successfully reaching their final destination, all in a matter of seconds.

Customers and their trading partners provide input to the Mincom Axis development plans and are now looking to expand their B2B integration capabilities well beyond the traditional purchasing processes. Mincom Axis is seen as platform that can be used to exchange any information in a secure and reliable manner.

With completely separate development, test and production environments, the Mincom Axis product support and customer implementation team follow a strict and comprehensive quality process to migrate changes between environments. The applications are built to be configured and updated according to a customer’s requirements and as such need to be able to be changed without impacting unrelated implementations.

Potential

As an Internet based solution, Mincom Axis was designed with international use in mind and in fact the first customers to go live in 2001 were in the USA, Peru and Indonesia.

Mincom Axis now has more than 60 customers spread across countries around the world including:

• Peru

• South Africa

• New Caledonia

• Indonesia

• United Kingdom

• Canada

• United States

• Columbia

• Chile

• Brazil

• New Zealand

The Mincom Axis business unit is a profitable line of business for Mincom earning with Year on year growth of over 100%:

As new standards for document formats, connectivity options and business processes emerge, Mincom Axis is well placed to easily and quickly implement these standards to meet customer needs. The most common XML, Internet and EDI standards are already supported and in use by customers around the globe. With its plug-and-play architecture, implementation of a new standard in one area does not impact other areas. For example, supporting the latest GS1 XML document standard does not impact the business process or connection channel components.

This model sets up Mincom Axis with unlimited potential to broaden its target industries, geographies and B2B business solutions.

The Mincom Axis platform itself is not limited to only support B2B or inter-organisational integration. The solution can be extended to support a hosted integration broker model, providing integration between systems within an organisation or reporting requirements to other organisations as is often the case between government departments. While Mincom Axis is a successful, profitable and rapidly growing business based around B2B integration, the hosted integration broker model provides an exciting additional international business opportunity for this innovative solution.

Other information the judges should know

www.mincom.com/solutions/axis/