Why? - The Problem, Cause & Need
Traditional trade formats are outdated and no longer sustainable.
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Pain Points: Wasteful back and forth
Traditional trade formats are outdated - slow, unresponsive, uncoordinated and opaque.
Almost all B2B trade partners recognize the need to change, but are struggling to shift to more modern online methods of trade. Manual interfaces of order processing via phone calls, emails, fax, courier, spreadsheets etc. are clearly inefficient, cumbersome, error-prone and expensive. Disjointed handoffs compound the already rising complexities in the buy-sell processes. Employees on either side of the trade waste time chasing, matching and reconciling data instead of investing time into more strategic and value-add tasks.
10 PAIN-POINTS
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1. Unresponsive: Customer expectations have changed
Customer responsiveness is the amongst the highest rated frustrations; customer loyalties are fickle - retention now demands real-time on-demand experience
2. Expensive: Rising costs of manpower and compliance
Low margins and mounting cost pressures leave no room for low productivity, duplication and rework
3. Slow: Compromises time to market, launches, supply velocity
With poor product differentiation speed is the competitive edge - time to market for new launches or for new trade partners getting transaction ready, revenue loss due to slow replenishment triggers; flash trade promotions are crucial to push stock offtake at the right time
4. Inefficient: Current sales productivity delivers just 11% active selling time
Disconnected sales team keeps chasing for order status and performance data
5. Fragmented: Broken supply chains with limited capability for MSME inclusion
Unviable for MSME Distributors
6. Opaque: Channel data transparency is now a necessity
Real-time market intelligence and sales distribution demands channel data transparency - no longer a good-to-have; it is a must-have. Data visibility across end-to-end channels is critical to make fact-based decisions; better planning data to stock right in every location; timely stock rotation reduces expiry costs - uncontrollable/ unmeasurable
7. Cumbersome: Rising complexities and traceability requirements
Rising complexities and traceability requirements are more demanding than ever before - end-to-end traceability for product safety, tax credits, AP/AR and more
8. Disjointed: Multiple systems do not talk to each other
Too many sets of data in silos and remain unavailable when needed - need for isolated systems to talk to each other freely - need single version of the truth
9. Error-prone: Take the transactions out emails and phone calls
Need holistic end-to-end interoperability for streamlined transaction processing - more than the error, reconciliation and dispute resolution consumes expensive man-hours
10. Unpredictable: Live status tracking with supply assurance
Accountability is needed to ensure that service levels are maintained and supply assurance is achieved with almost perfect OTIF rates.
Cause: Disjointed Silos & Broken Data Trails
Silos are no longer sustainable. No business is an island. Fates of businesses are increasingly interlinked.
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Silos operate through inherently error-prone manual processes with inefficient and interrupted handoffs
The duplicative back-n-forth in inter-party interfaces is a time consuming non-value-added effort with recurring cost. Opaque and expensive silos slowdown business and breakdown scale with poor customer responsiveness - as this clearly lacks coordination and convenience. This leads to unavoidable rework, duplication and non-value-add tasks like manual data entry, line-level matching, data verifications etc.
Get over the wasteful back and forth of silos
Immediate Imperative - breaking silos to avoid downsides of disjointed chains. Inefficiencies, interruptions and inconsistencies amongst trade partners are the cause of hidden costs, waste and frustrations. Manual interfaces, disjointed processes and broken trade chains are inherently inefficient - non-value-add activities, duplication, delays and disputes.
Silos are expensive and consuming speed-breakers
Silos have no place in this fast-paced interconnected world. Get hyper-connected for hyper-performance - no more going back and forth. Even the most efficient silos are not effective: While the traditional focus is on creating efficient silos within the organization, progressive businesses strengthen horizontal processes for internal efficiencies and joint processes for external efficiencies.
Even the most efficient silos are not effective
While the traditional focus is on creating efficient silos within the organization, progressive businesses strengthen horizontal processes for internal efficiencies and joint processes for external efficiencies.
Increasingly critical to orchestrate MSME trade partners
Standalone company is like a team-player without a team. Even if the business may have the requisite talent (aka strategy) and form (aka business model) needed to win but without the team it is all worthless. As the business world gets increasingly interconnected, and as the boundaries disappear, businesses are becoming extremely interdependent - more than ever before. Nutshell: Connect and collaborate to remain competitive - Integrate the value chain to execute Industry 4.0.
Standalone ERP/IT systems are like a mobile device without network connectivity
Fortified IT-systems are no longer sufficient in the digital age. Even if it has the processing power to operate apps locally but no network connectivity. Blatantly limiting, isn’t it! That too in this increasingly interconnected world. When disconnected for any reason, we often say that my phone is dead. Means no different for your standalone enterprise systems. Nutshell: Fortified IT-systems are no longer sufficient in the digital age.
Need: Multiparty Alignment & Coordinated Networks
Businesses operate and compete as chains and networks (not as standalone companies)
Coordinated networks with utmost synergy, agility, visibility and experience are the only means to sustainable competitive advantage. Multiparty alignment is crucial for sustained higher performance - imperative to integrate the many moving parts across multiparty lines.
10 PLATFORM IMPERATIVES TO ADDRESS B2B COMPLEXITIES
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Real-Time - Anytime Anywhere Always-in-Sync
Always-in-sync - Orchestrated ecosystem with unified processes
Business Agility - Instant triggers for rapid response
Availability - Live 24x365 - Live round-the-clock to capture events as they happen
Anytime Anywhere - Live availability to anyone with anytime anywhere access - via any device.
Operate simultaneously - Enables trade partners and chains to act in tandem on a parallel environment
End-to-End & Many-to-Many
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Many-to-Many (non-linear)
Many-to-many vs Point-to-point - As a connected enterprise on Hotlink you link your business with customers, distributors, suppliers, salesforce, service, marketing, supply chain and more - delivering many advantages for higher sustained performance.
Multibrand
Overlapping Trade Channels - Safely work alongside other brands in the non-exclusive web of overlapping trade networks. Channel partners no longer need separate computers for each brand.
Multilevel Chains
Single-tier is limiting Product changes hands many times before it reaches the end-consumer - the supply relays from one to next to another and so forth - these chains are crucial for deeper market penetration or widen geographic reach. It then becomes important to resolve complexities owing to opacity of the (1+n) degree trade partners. Primarily, because brand reputation remains affixed with the company even when the product changes hands many times in multilevel trade chains.
Multilevel traceabilityEnd-to-end data trails are crucial for holistic value-creation and assurance. Distribution chains face rising complexity with rising responsibility for auditable provenance for product authenticity and/or traceability for recalls.
Skip-level visibility Enables strong business intelligence to emerge on a real-time and truly end-to-end basis.
Multifunctional: Both Buy-side and Sell-side
Many functional networks mapped into the platform:
- Sales
- Distribution
- Customer Services
- Supply Chain
- Service
- Sourcing
Data-Singularity - Single Version of the Truth
Central Masters - Item masters and price masters are structured as a single data point - used by all mapped parties
One-Point Merchandising - Cataloging information plotted by the brand is used by everyone in the mapped network without duplication and rework
Mirrored Transaction Records - No need to reconcile - Transactional records refer to the same data-point to completely avoid mismatches
Open for Inclusion
Diversity Inclusion - Included irrespective of business size, nature or maturity of business automation. Despite level/ stage of automation, choice of ERP or nature of IT-system. Easy on boarding of even the smallest and remotest of trade partners.
Multinational, Multisector - Design and map both national and multinational trade networks.
Entire business community - Flexibly and securely configure the business/trade relationships with other businesses (customers, distributors, suppliers), third-party-entities, field force and other persons to create a digital map of your entire business community - all in one place.
Any-to-any mapping - Map any business to any business without restrictions
MSME viablility - remotest and smallest traders - Smooth pathways for adoption by MSME (micro, small and medium enterprises)
Neutral - Data-Safe
Trust and safety (unbiased)
Non-discriminatory positioning on an independent platform maintains arms-length segregation that critically offers psychological comfort to assure a sense of security against competitive dilution. It instils data hygiene, nurtures a climate of openness and fuels collaboration.
Data-Safe
No Data Use Without Permission - On Hotlink your data is completely safe - you own, control, use and share your data.
Safe from Other Accounts - While the platform offers visibility options, you entirely control the sharing of your data. Watertight sharing frameworks are deployed only in reseller trade arrangements. Brands are securely mapped and firewalled by TULIP (Tunnelled Unit Level Integration Protocol).
Safe from Data Sale - Many platforms claim to use it at a broader cumulative level - but we explicitly state that we do not do that as we are not in the business of selling data or data reports. Besides monitoring usage of your account, we do not access or analyse any data or content in your account.
Safe from Private Label Alternatives - Nor do we use the data to garner any competitive intelligence to float competing products on a private label.
Safe from Users within the Account - Role-based Access Control allow segregation of rights to view and edit.
Equal - Full Stack for Interoperability
Full-stack as an Equalizer to Bridge the Digital Divide
Fill-up Gaps for InteroperabilityWhile for some it may initially seem like an overlap with ERP functionalities, the primary purpose it serves is to bridge the gap for MSME traders or other SMB operations in low-revenue markets where IT systems are not equally advanced to enable advanced operational automation of shared workflows.
Wide ScopeHotlink has a full-stack of applications across buy-side, sell-side, salesforce automation, CRM, after-sales and more. Deployed for both upstream and downstream operations. Many business networks on one cloud platform - sales, distribution, supply chain, warehousing, 3PL, procurement, service and more. Design supply chain as a true reflection of your ever-evolving business strategy.
Address complex scenariosEver evolving needs to jointly deliver upon commitments to customers and to shape newer go-to-market formats with superior engines for growth and profitability.
Flat (not hierarchical): No subset/ shadow accounts
Every business manages their account - which is equally empowered like anyone else - no one is a shadow account to anyone else. No account is controlled by any other account. Anchored (key stone) vs everybody equal
Privacy & Secrecy
No Publicly Published Pricing - B2B brands avoid publishing pricing in public to protect competitive positioning and keeping their strategic headroom for deal closure
1-to-1 Custom Pricing - B2B contracts may vary by every trade partner - we even offer many different contracts with one party (needed when billings are done based on customer segment)
Personalization - Configurability
Configurable to fit into any business context - highly adaptable as every business is unique - Every business is unique - more so in B2B arrangements. Platform offers flexibility to fit-for-purpose in your unique business context. Platform is highly configurable and flexible to accommodate custom business scenarios and workflows tailored to customer-specific context.
Integration-friendly- Plug into Enterprise Applications - Work alongside legacy systems. Leverage one-to-many integration.
- Integrate Once to Integrate with Many (not point-to-point) - Each account just integrates once to the platform and they seamlessly trade with all other subscribers on the platform.
- Direct-Use Option Available - Simply login to any browser with anytime anywhere convenience and use it directly for advanced functionalities
Plug-n-Play - Pace-it & Phase-it
On-the-Go Rollout - Not a huge project to setup. The transformation is not a consuming and extensive Implementation.
Pace-it and phase-it - One at a time - Allows you to pace-it and phase-it with a completely modular approach without straining resources & bandwidth - one segment of distributors or vendors or customers at a time or one market, one BU or even one party at a time.
Configurability over Customization - Framework driven designs to allow strong configurability instead of customzations that entail costs and delays
Pay-for-Use - Hassle-free As-a-Service
Risk-free Pay-for-Use Arrangement - Hotlink is easy to adopt - on-the-go with hassle-free “as-a-service” arrangement (no upfront capital or commitment)
Amazingly Controlled Total Cost of Ownership - Important to compare at TCO-to-TCO (total cost of ownership)
What? - The Opportunities
Integrated Trade Networks - Orchestrate multiparty alignment to unlock higher growth, profitability and intelligence.
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Opportunities
Slideshow: Opportunities
1-MAX-3 RULE: We strongly urge to define precise and measurable goals to maximize the advantage. No more than 3 goals - ideally 1 primary goal with 2 add-on goals.
AIM FOR MULTIPLE TIMES ROI: Define goals with clear ROI. Just one precise goal is better than 10 vague ones. For instance, sales productivity can itself deliver 2x-4x worth of active selling time - equivalent to current sales payroll cost. Arbitrage on inventory risk can add up to 9% in margins. All this needs to be assessed in your business context - and simply enabled on Hotlink.
Scope
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Business Model - Trade Network & Portfolio (Setup Your Way)
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Flexible Network Design: Access, Discover & Map
- Reshape trade network design and operational models to break down silos - - Linked brands and mapped products
- Link multilevel distribution networks and many-to-many non-linear web of trade arrangements
- Find and get found by new trade partners
- Publish to flag when looking for distributors or vendors
- Leverage continued connectivity to manage and engage a large network
Products Organizer - Custom Item Classification
Curate Personalized Portfolios with Custom Classification & Live-PIM (product information management)
Secure Content Portals to Keep Everyone On-The-Same-Page
Easily Get Your Content to Work for You.Secure portals for variety of purposes - Secure CMS & Smart Intranets.
Illustrative use cases: Dealer portal, Customer portal, Vendor portal, Learning resources, Training portal (for trainers), Reference library, Internal Communication, Employee Intranet, Digital Bulletin Board, Employee Recognition, People Activities, Events Profiling, Activity/Campaign Profiling, Staff Policies, Product Info Manager, Employee Recognition, Product Websites, MediaBin Library, Many more
Illustrative use cases: Dealer portal, Customer portal, Vendor portal, Learning resources, Training portal (for trainers), Reference library, Internal Communication, Employee Intranet, Digital Bulletin Board, Employee Recognition, People Activities, Events Profiling, Activity/Campaign Profiling, Staff Policies, Product Info Manager, Employee Recognition, Product Websites, MediaBin Library, Many more
Custom Pricing
One-to-one pricing for each trade partner. Secrecy is paramount in B2B trade arrangements - hence the design on Hotlink does not require publishing public pricing. Also, each B2B arrangement is unique and may require specific pricing between the trade partners.
Sales Acceleration (More Growth)
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Sales Automation
- Sales productivity - Sales enablement with 2x/3x active selling time
- Live Sales Dashboards: no more chasing performance data and confirming sales credits or collections booking
- Redesign sales processes and customer-bonding to align with restricted field-work and reduced physical interactions
- Shift from door-to-door order collection to digital order processing
Customer Experience
Customer expectations have changed - now they need on-demand information and anytime-anywhere convenience; repeat business and loyalty now depends on the new marketing battlefront of CX
Speed-to-Market with One-Click-Agility
- New Launches: Unlock effectiveness to leverage the novelty factor and to maximize the impulse triggers for "new"
- Flash Pricing & Promotions
- Quickly on-board distribution partners - Distributors Mapping to BUs, Product Portfolio Delegation, Allocation of Markets; Rapid contracting and speedy expansion
- Adapt on-the-go to redesign the distribution network
- Dynamically Adjusting Transaction Readiness: Reduced administrative man-hours in back-and-forth with new trade partners at the time of changes in item masters, pricing revision etc.
- Single-Point Merchandising
- Speedy Stock Rotation
- Faster stock replenishment to maximize revenue capture
Leads, Deals & Promotions
New business, trade deals & promotions with open and free messaging for product queries and trade inquiries; flash promotions and instant price revisions; reduce administration in release/ execution of schemes to boost sales, seasonal deals, stock liquidation etc.
Content Marketing
- Outreach: communicate economically yet leverage wide outreach
- Influencer marketing and more influencer, endorsement etc
- Refresh and promote content on a high frequency while you organize it in context by importance (and not randomly layering it under the chronology)
- Gain brand visibility
Connected Commerce (Full Sync)
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Streamlined Order-to-Cash/Pay
- Take the transactions out of emails and phone calls - manual handoffs are inherently error-prone
- Custom one-to-one pricing
- Customer Experience
Supply Velocity & Assurance
Rapid response capabilities with real-time triggers; higher supply velocity and stronger supply assurance; slashed lead times and cross-company consensus; sustained improvement in responsiveness; achieve high rate of perfect orders (OTIF-rate)
Cross-Border Trade
- Easily configure completely different taxes structures beyond federal boundaries
- Manage multi-currency commercials and transactions
Multilevel Visibility (Full View)
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Channel Visibility
- Trusted Planning Data: End-to-end channel visibility enables real-time exchange of reliable planning data
- Analytics: leverage clean channel data for combined chain data analytics
- Multilevel mapping of trade, stock and other data
Multilevel Traceability
Strong anti-counterfeiting controls, safety and authentication provenance need unbroken trails of goods movement across multiple supplies; including product identification by serial number of every unique piece
Trade Credit Via Multilevel Consignment Tracking
Leverage stock consignment controls as a tool for higher growth and revenue capture; maintain stock for sale-on-approval and bill-on-consumption basis to gain revenue with institutional buyers.
Open many pathways to enhance margins; redesign the distribution network; arbitrage on cost of working capital and inventory risk using consignment models; direct account management or other ways to reapportion margins across the distribution chain made possible with full-sync and full-view.
Open many pathways to enhance margins; redesign the distribution network; arbitrage on cost of working capital and inventory risk using consignment models; direct account management or other ways to reapportion margins across the distribution chain made possible with full-sync and full-view.
Performance Optimization (More Controls)
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Inventory Optimization
Robust inventory controls with reduced inventory holding, optimized inventory turnover and reduced expiries; monitor and execute FIFO/FEFO at a network level; track nearing-expiry across 3rd party stocking points (even for distributor owned inventory)
AR/AP Management
AP/AR tracked-settled-reconciled with mirrored-records between seller and buyer - match to settle invoice-wise
Assets Tracking & Utilisation
Better asset utilisation with shared workflows for custody, allocation and rotation; non-saleable assets, demos, loaners etc involve high investment in many businesses across product sectors - it is critical to both safeguard these assets and to maximize the return from the investment in these assets
After-sales Service
- Installed base tracking
- Warranty management
- AMC Coverage
- Claims Management
- Service ticketing
- Repair work orders
- Spared inventory management
Cut Costs & Save Time
Lower transaction processing costs with paperless efficiency and transactional hygiene; gain staff productivity - prevent errors, duplication, rework and reconciliation; efficiency gains as high as 60-90% in various workflows; higher employee engagement
Robust Compliance
Audit-worthy records, robust controls, compliance and risk management - reconciled tax credits and AP/AR balances; cut complexities in recording, reconciling and reporting
Slideshow: Sample Screenshots
Slideshow: Sample Scope Overview
CONSTANTLY EVOLVING SCOPE: Business needs keep changing - technology cannot get rigid and outdated as business evolves. With Hotlink you benefit from ongoing enhancements to features and functionalities - platform keeps evolving with regular refinements. Seamless updates refresh capabilities as frequent releases with no downtime regularly upgrade the platform. Refinements and enhancements released on an almost weekly basis. Rigorous and thorough testing protocols ensure that the platform maintains its reliablity and availability.
How? - The Adoption & Approach
Multiparty Platform - Make B2B Digital without the pains and uncertainties of a complex transformation project.
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Adoption - From Barriers To Leverages
| FROM BARRIERS | TO LEVERAGES | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | ||
| Upfront Commitment | Involves high budget/ capital & resource Commitment | No upfront commitment required - choose to start as low as one user cost (that too gets a 100% offset in the trade fee as and when you transact) |
| Running Cost (TCO) | High annual costs | Pay-for-use with no hidden costs |
| Change | ||
| Long-term Project | Full blown digital transformation project with expensive setup and rollout | Plug-n-play -- Adapt on-the-go (easy to DIY; configurability) |
| Disruption & Distraction | Risk: Will disrupt things - they are all set to run the way they are running right now; requires focus, follow-ups and coordination | Pace-it and phase-it on-the-go; one thing at a time, one party at a time |
| Personalization | Rigid design forces too much of standardization and templates | High configurability |
| Agility | Risk: Takes too long to activate a new trade partner or to switch from one to the other | Web-check-in onboarding of trade partners and quick transaction readiness |
| Adaptability | Business needs keep changing - technology gets rigid and outdated as business evolves | Addressing the constant need to evolve - Benefit from ongoing enhancements to features and functionalities - platform keeps evolving with regular refinements; Seamless updates - frequent releases with no downtime - Refinements and enhancements released on an almost weekly basis. Rigorous and thorough testing protocols |
| Open | ||
| MSME Inclusion | Difficult to on-board MSME trade partners | Smallest-remotest trade partners viable |
| Network Design | Rigid design; limiting | Many-to-many (non-linear) & Multilevel |
| Neutral | ||
| Trade Secrets | Do not want to publish pricing - is public pricing enforced in any way; are the leads screened and filtered by the platform? | One-to-one Custom Pricing (kept private between trade partners only); leads are direct between trade partners - new business connections are not administered by us |
| Data Safety | Data theft/misuse | No use of data - not even on consolidated basis |
| Equal | ||
| Account Rights | Is my account a subset to any other account - does the principal brand hold higher rights than distributors | Every account is equally empowered - and positioned the center of their own networks; no shadow/ subset account |
| Interoperability | Handoffs are difficult as the trade partner does not have the same level of functionalities | Full-stack process functionalities for MSMEs to make the processes and capabilities equal for everyone |
| Technology | ||
| Data Security | Cybersecurity Risk | Enterprise-grade Data Security |
| User Experience | Complex web pages are impossible for day-long screen time | Simple, intuitive and utilitarian user experience |
| Integration | Will the platform complement the enterprise systems | Integration with legacy systems - Work alongside legacy systems. Leverage one-to-many integration |
| Validated | Is the technology reliable | Besides extensive testing protocols before any release, Hotlink platform can be validated easily - either with extensive walkthru testing during detailed live demos or via an technology diligence or a combination of both. Moreover the platform has been deployed in the past with the distribution network of a Fortune medtech brand for many years before being repackaged into its current plug-n-play model |
| White-Labelling | Allow brand appeal along with technology capabilities | Use the domain associated with your brand, sector, project etc. |
| Expertise | ||
| Learning Curve | Too high - demands too much training | Designed for DIY (do-it-yourself) |
| Tech Expertise/ Skills | Expensive tech staff/ arrangements | Tech-skills not needed |
| Support | Support is needed as and when needed | Documentation is available 24x365 plus user support available - charged on actual resolution time per minute (not per hour) - true to the pay-for-use model |
Getting Started
Seamless connectivity is the most powerful force in business today.
More Slideshows
Set 1
Slideshow: Sales Productivity
Slideshow: Sample Screeshots
Set 2
Slideshow: Multilevel Visibility of Stock
Slideshow: Multilevel Stock Traceability
Slideshow: Clean & Fresh Channel Data
Set 3
Slideshow: One-to-One Target Pricing
Slideshow: Supply Velocity & Assurance
Slideshow: Centrally Harmonize Item Masters
Slideshow: Bar Code Scanning Across the Network
Slideshow: Staff & Cost Productivity
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