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a streamlined August 2020 payment process
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Fostering the evolution of commerce in commodity raw materials.
Harnessing Technology for the LBM Industry By Paul Dean Director of Business Development
I
’ve been in the lumber and building materials industry for most of my career and have always had an interest in technology. It seems not too long ago when I was running seminars to display this “new thing” called the internet to dealers; at the time, nobody knew what was going to become of it, but I was positive that big things were on the horizon when waitingfor-signed-documents-to-arrive-in-the-mail was replaced by the screech of the fax machine and its promise to deliver a copy of forms in just minutes—which was, comparatively, instantaneous. Technological innovation continued as mobile phones were no longer mounted in cars and could be carried in your pocket, rendering constant accessibility. Next came e-mail, mobile apps, chat rooms, instant messaging, etc.… my tech thoughts were churning as these new tools advanced the processes of the lumber business, a traditional industry not typically known to embrace technology. Once Enterprise Resource Planning was added to our vernacular as ERP and had become the norm in the LBM world, it showed people that integration with other programs, sharing data in business processes, EDI, and electronic invoicing was the next frontier in digital commerce. To adopt such a different way of doing business had taken some serious effort and a new generation of thinking, but it became the greatest impetus to move away from paper. Everything about the way we did things changed with ERP for automating and digitizing business, particularly in material flow and inventory management throughout the distribution channel. MaterialsXchange represents the next era of data transparency and information sharing, truly in real time, meaning the purchasing and delivery of forest products begins immediately after clicking the button. Our easy to use price discovery technology allows mills and buyers to instantly create markets, negotiate pricing, and place orders quickly, and MX can be integrated with companies’ current ERP for seamless, secure transfer of data. After signing up to become an MX user, the access to our digital marketplace is actually instantaneous—unlike a noisy fax machine.
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