The Databuild B2B Model

B2B is the common abbreviation of Business to Business E – Commerce: dealing with your trading partners electronically.

Databuild has had e-commerce components for nearly 25 years when we first started transferring catalogues and prices between builders and suppliers via floppy disks.

B2B is ideally a 2 way street - dealing both up the supply chain with your suppliers, sub-contractors, banks and statuary authorities and down the chain with your customers.

In the typical building industry model, your customers are often once off and lack the IT experience and software to effectively communicate electronically apart from Emails. However, Databuild has several B2B methods available:

•	Automatic generation of documents, emails and SMS messages triggered by completion or non completion of any project stage.

•	Generation and transmission of proposals, marketing information and contracts

When dealing with Suppliers, especially larger ones, you are usually dealing with those who realize the advantage of B2B, so it hopefully comes down to mechanics rather than the will to do anything.

Databuild holds a catalogue of items and prices from various suppliers as well as general items.

Databuild holds an unlimited number of system prices against each item. Each system price has a set Price Level (such as cost, retail, area based etc) and a valid until date.

As well, each item can have an unlimited number of supplier prices, with differing supplier references (which may be a GTIN code), prices, validity dates and comments

•	SPLAT format. A legacy DOS Databuild format now well over 20 years old

•	Fixed Position. An ASCII format where the same fields have the same user definable character position on each line

•	Separated Values. An ASCII format where the same fields appear in the same user definable order on each line, separated by a nominated character such as a comma

•	Databuild format. A special case of separated values format where the field order and separators are preset.

•	Items and prices can be imported into either system prices or supplier prices.

Accurate production of purchase orders that are inexorably linked to your estimates, proposals and standard are critical for business survival. The savings derived from efficient and timely transmission are enormous.

Databuild electronically transmits purchase orders to suppliers in the following formats on a supplier by supplier basis:

•	Hardware Industry Working Group (HIWG) (available Jan 2006).

Additionally, Databuild can attach any number of documents, drawings and internet links to each order

At the press of a button, Databuild sends emails to all relevant suppliers and sub contractors detailing all outstanding orders and their required delivery dates

Similar to Purchase Orders, Databuild can generate quotation requests to your nominated suppliers for each cost centre

As well as documentation generated by purchase orders, Databuild can generate any amount of documents or messages, generated by completion or non- completion of any stage on any job. These take the form of:

•	Printed documents that are then dispatched normally.

After importing, authorization and checking processes can be run before updating

Some of your suppliers, especially sub-contractors, are likely to be less than sophisticated when it comes to accounting and are likely to be unhappy or unable to wait until their part of job is complete before invoicing you in full: they want regular progress payments.

This of course can become an administrative minefield. You must ensure that their progress invoices are valid, do not exceed the work done and are not doubled up.

In Databuild, rather than waiting for suppliers to send in their invoices, then individually authorizing and posting them, you can automatically generate and transmit requests for invoices to selected suppliers detailing what invoices you are prepared to accept for each purchase order / work order from completion data generated from your supervisors. It can monitor their responses and automatically post the invoices after doing the normal integrity and criteria checking.

•	Fully formatted Pro Forma Tax invoices can be dispatched to these suppliers to sign and return to you

•	Emails can be sent informing suppliers what invoices you will accept.

•	It can be used to accept or reject actual incoming invoices

•	Return Emails or SMS messages can be monitored to trigger creation of invoices.

When a supplier confirms a request (thereby invoicing you), the system can automatically post their invoice(s).

Databuild creates EFT files for transmission to your bank for processing of payments. Formats supported are:

•	EFT remittances can be sent by email or SMS

Bank Statements can be imported into the Bank Reconciliation module. Formats supported:

•	Direct Savings: less printing, postage, stationery, photocopying, plan printing, faxing, telephone, bank charges. It is reasonably easy to justify $200-$300 per house for domestic builders

•	Labour Savings: E-COMMERCE is dramatically faster. Although harder to quantify and cost, the savings are at least as great as the direct savings

•	Intrinsic Savings: The automated nature of E-commerce, the immediacy of the system and the detailed trail lead to less mistakes, better prices, shorter delivery times and more profit.