Uptake of SaaS EDI gains momentum as Companies realise Cost Savings

The marketplace for SaaS EDI, the e-procurement service that increases the Return On Investment from EDI, is expanding fast according to experts First B2B.

In just the last year live transactions through First B2B SaaS EDI systems have increased by over 120%, of which the invoices alone represented a total value of 950m.

First B2B Managing Director, Ian Ford, commented: The message is getting through to companies that EDI no longer needs to consume large amounts of internal IT resource. The application of SaaS technology totally eliminates the need for hardware, software or EDI expertise at the sites of trading partners. Take away these expensive hurdles and Finance Directors soon recognise that the long promised benefits of EDI are easily available and that the costs of manual document processing can be eliminated. This represents significant savings for most companies. Some First B2B clients are achieving Return on Investment of over 300% as can be seen by two recently released case studies.

Ford doesnt expect the credit crunch to dim companies enthusiasm either. In fact he believes quite the opposite. SaaS EDI allows Finance and IT Directors to deliver directly quantifiable savings without any capital expenditure. The multi-tenanted structure of the service means that costs are proportional to usage so that even smaller companies can make identifiable savings, whilst larger companies can make larger savings by using SaaS EDI. Our experience is that, as times get tougher, companies are keen to implement such straightforward ways of saving costs.

First B2B Limited is investing for a growing number of transactions being processed through their servers. Ford Says During the last financial year we decided to invest more with our hosting partner Rackspace.com to accommodate the growth in transactions that we were predicting, and we have continued to spend this year to ensure that our clients, and their business partners receive the fastest, most secure and reliable SaaS EDI service available. We have invested in ISO 9000:2001 accreditation for our on-boarding, mapping and support processes, expanded our infrastructure for growth and we are now implementing a Six Sigma project to make sure First B2B is always the leader in SaaS EDI.

First B2B has also been developing their software platform and Ford announced, In the next two months, First B2B Limited will be launching two new products for low volume EDI users and enhancements to their existing Traffic Manager View web-based interface that will offer substantial increases in value to both existing and new clients

About First B2B

First B2B Limited is the leading provider of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) electronic trading. Serving the Worlds top companies in: Construction; Food; FMCG; Print, Paper, Packaging & Publishing; and Computer Manufacturing, over 400 companies currently rely on First B2B to link them with their trading partners, together they exchange more than a million transactions each year through First B2Bs service.