Supplier Self-Service

tammy10_co

Member
Has anyone implemented web-based supplier self- service, especially in Xe?
If so, can you tell me about the level of effort it took to do so? What
obstacles were encountered? What wisdom and advice can you impart?

Thanks in advance!

Tammy Baade
M&D Information Systems, Inc.
 
Tammy

Not done this yet but it's one area we are possibly thinking of for the future.

Our thoughts on this at the moment are that from a config side it should be farily straightforward. It should just be a case of having a new version of say P0411 with the processing options set to allow self service. Then give your supplier a user id with the address book number set equal to their supplier number. The P0411 should have event rules that secure out the supplier number etc... Some security will be needed around the user id/ group and a menu will be needed. Then test it to death to make sure they can't get anywhere they shouldn't.

The tricky part we think is getting this so a supplier can log in. We already have a web server which lots of our interal users log into so that is one hurdle crossed. We will need to make this available to external users in a secure way. We're thinking of usig Microsoft ISA to do this in a secure manner but the other option is to have a new network card in the web server and have the users go into that through a firewall. On the web server we will have a dedicated instance set up for external users so we can track who is logged in and also maintain a bit more control. We are alreasdy doing this for some aras of our organisation who are not on our internal network. The ISA is causing us a few headaches but generally things are going OK.

Do you have a working web server at present? If not that in itself will be a considerable amount of work to get up and running and tested. Then I think it's time to sit down and have a think about the architecture/security side of things (not my strongest point I must admit).

Finally you need to have a think about training/educating your suppliers. If they have never seen One World before it may be tricky for them to understand. One approach we are piloting is to have the log on button to One World on a basic web page. On that web page we publish manuals, tips, bulletins etc.. The idea is to make it a one stop shop so that they can educate themselves as much as possible.

Hope this gives you a few ideas.

Pete
 
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