Mincom, a global commercial software and services company, today announced that Australian food retailer, Woolworths Group Limited, has signed Mincom Axis as a certified B2B integration partner.

This follows Woolworths’ decision to adopt the Applicability Statement 2 (AS2) protocol to support its B2B integration. AS2 is a specification for Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) between businesses using the Internet, which allows businesses to use a common, single communications solution.

Mincom Axis is one of only three of Woolworths’ current strategic partners. Using the AS2 standard, Woolworths’ thousands of suppliers can now select Mincom Axis as a certified B2B integration solution to connect to the Woolworths’ ebusiness platform for the exchange of procurement and other supply chain business documents.

Peter Roebers, Senior Business Manager, E-Business of Woolworths, said, “We are committed to offer our customers the best possible prices. By adopting a single B2B communication standard we can streamline costs as it eliminates the complications involved when dealing with different suppliers that have different connectivity capabilities. After an extensive evaluation and certification process, we chose Mincom because of Mincom Axis’ technical capability with AS2, the team’s expertise in helping organisations to integrate supply chains, and its overall ability to operate as a strategic partner to help deliver business outcomes.”

Peter Suchting, Executive Vice President of Mincom Axis, said, “This is a significant achievement for Mincom and sets the stage for us to pursue many opportunities in the retail sector in Australia. The Mincom Axis solution is delivered as a private eHub and so provides greater control of B2B collaboration for our customers. What’s more, the solution has scope well beyond Woolworths’ inbound supply chain.”

Mincom Axis is a hosted B2B integration solution that is deployed as an organisation’s private e-Hub to provide integration from internal business systems directly to trading partners, e-marketplaces, or other intermediaries. It is delivered as a hosted (outsourced) solution so it eliminates the need to invest in costly and complex in-house B2B integration infrastructure or expensive transactional-based third parties.