E-Business Integration Eliminates Duplication of Effort

Business Situation
An internationally-networked media and communications services provider required an EDI partner to assist with the day-to-day international support of their existing fragmented, multi-translator environment, while also migrating to one consistent platform for EDI and Data Integration.

Key Business Challenges

• Streamline and integrate business operations as through merger and acquisition there were disparate systems located around the globe. The objective was to streamline and connect a variety of business functions including accounting, production and management, plant maintenance, sales and distribution.
• Integrate its e-business systems as the current environment was slow, error-prone, and expensive to maintain separately. The goal was to implement a new, real-time system that could link its e-business operations with the SAP system to improve invoicing, payments and other transactions with their corporate customers.
• To further enhance efficiency, improve response rates, increase transaction rates and reduce costs, the company wanted the e-business system to have Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) capabilities. These capabilities would give the ability to link to the variety of e-business transactions used by its operations and corporate customers worldwide.
• The search was on for an EDI partner who could provide support for the existing environments while also implementing a new solution and migrating the trading partners to that new solution

Effective Data Role

• Provide day to day support of existing Gentran environment with support for global locations
• Migrate and add new trading partners and transactions utilizing new EAI tool – SAP PI

The Results

• Major efficiency and cost improvements by replacing disparate systems with single global enterprise system
• Response times have improved remarkably and replies to customer and partner queries are now immediate which has led to increased transaction capabilities
• The number of maps has been dramatically reduced while supporting proprietary XML formats, EDIFACT, and ANSI X12. This has eliminated maintenance and thus lowered IT costs.