What comes to mind when you read those words? Does your organization have issues attaining the product data you need to run your manufacturing operations?

Buyer/supplier information synergy to me means that at any given time, if a piece of data is needed to complete a product description or a piece of data is needed to place a product or service order that is not available in your ERP applications, your suppliers are willing and able to provide the piece of data automatically without human intervention.

That probably sounds ridiculous.

This situation probably sounds more familiar:

1.) New equipment is installed
2.) The recommended spares list is loaded directly into ERP
3.) The new equipment malfunctions, goes down
4.) Production stops
5.) The maintenance department attempts to replace failed component only to find there is no inventory
6.) Maintenance frantically calling machine builder/suppliers/plant engineering to identify the failed component

This may be an over simplification or might not be something your organization can relate to, but, there are several types of technology and business process that enable prevention of this scenario and other problems that plague the large manufacturers supply chain.
—a common unified schema or dictionary used by all commercial organizations to label product information (eOTD)
—a common method of transmitting this information directly into ERP prior to the need arising to replace a component (xml)
—develop a supporting business process to ensure the needed information is requested (people)

As manufacturers/suppliers/BPO providers we all need to work together to move to a common method of requesting, transmitting and receiving the information we need to keep our operations running.