Company Description
A large manufacturer of health and beauty products restructures their entire EDI environment
Summary
A large manufacturer of health and beauty products with five divisions upgraded to the most recent version Microsoft Dynamics AX and found themselves rethinking their EDI environment. Having previously developed and managed their own EDI integrations they quickly realized that maintaining their own system was expensive, resource intensive and limited in features. Selecting vSync EDI for Microsoft Dynamics AX provided them with a highly flexible solution that gave them the control they wanted but without the need to dedicate IT resources.
Key EDI & Shipping Issues
A large manufacturer of health and beauty products with five divisions upgraded to the most recent version Microsoft Dynamics AX and found themselves rethinking their EDI environment. Having previously developed and managed their own EDI integrations they quickly realized that maintaining their own system was expensive, resource intensive and limited in features. Selecting vSync EDI for Microsoft Dynamics AX provided them with a highly flexible solution that gave them the control they wanted but without the need to dedicate IT resources.
One of the advantages of Microsoft Dynamics AX is it's ability to be customized to accommodate any business in any vertical. Unlike packaged software, there are no limits to functionality or integration, which can be both a blessing and a curse.
A large manufacturer of health and beauty products upgrading from Microsoft Dynamics AX version 3.0 to Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 had some tough decisions to make when it came to determining if they should continue to manage their own custom built EDI solution or begin to look at other EDI models for Microsoft Dynamics AX.
The company decided a few years back to dedicate an IT resource to their EDI environment. Their developer custom built an EDI environment that was specific to the company's customized implementation of Microsoft Dynamics AX. As new EDI trading partners were brought on the employee's sole job was EDI mapping, testing, and developing customizations to accommodate each EDI trading partner's requirements.
As the company made plans to upgrade to the newest version of Microsoft Dynamics AX they began to rethink their strategy about maintaining their custom built EDI solution.
They wanted the ability to deploy this EDI resource to other areas of the business but yet they wanted the flexibility of maintaining control over their EDI functionality. They wanted the ability to quickly add new trading partners but did not want to sacrifice the functionality they had gained from custom building their EDI integrations in lieu of an inflexible off-the-shelf EDI solution.
The company planned to add an additional 8 EDI trading partners once their new version of Microsoft Dynamics AX was complete and wanted to ensure their EDI customers could be up and running quickly. Under their existing structure, the task of implementing any new EDI customers was a remote possibility.
Many EDI solutions they looked at required heavy customization that could not be leveraged if another version upgrade to Microsoft Dynamics AX was needed in the future. What they really wanted was a hybrid EDI model. One that enabled them to make adjustments as needed but that was fully integrated with Microsoft Dynamics AX and built to accommodate the unique structure of customization that surrounds this full featured ERP system.
Problem Resolution & Results
The company chose vSync EDI solutions built specifically for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009. Using vSync EDI solutions, the company was able to utilize a hybrid EDI model that gave them complete flexibility yet offered an environment to deploy configurable business rules that easily accommodate customizations of the AX system. Business rules that previously had to be hard coded for each EDI trading partner could now be configured by company or division, by customer and even by product, saving a considerable amount of implementation time.
Today adding new trading partners is predictable, and simple. Using vSync's template library of more than 900 trading partners means mapping time is reduced by 75% and new trading partners can be added at no additional cost to the company. Adding the 8 additional trading partners including testing would now take a few weeks instead of 6 months.
Using vSync EDI solutions ensured that any new customizations to their Microsoft Dynamics AX system would be easily accommodated. vSync's unique integration methodology using AIF ensures that EDI transactional data updates the system in real time and reduces the risk of errors in a high volume environment. Users liked vSync’s interface which replicates the look and feel of Microsoft Dynamics AX and familiar, decreasing training time. All processing takes place within Microsoft Dynamics AX - users could not tell what was native to Microsoft Dynamics and what functionality came from vSync.
vSync's support and services offered a key differentiator as well. vSync had a thorough knowledge of Microsoft Dynamics AX and built the product themselves. Many EDI providers outsource the integration plug-ins of their EDI solutions because they're solutions are offered to integrate with many business systems. Customers using these models are often left with sparse EDI functionality and receive a limited level of support as the EDI vendor doesn’t have the intimate knowledge of the integration combined with Microsoft Dynamics AX.
vSync solutions are developed specifically for Microsoft Dynamics and have been tested by Microsoft to ensure compatibility. They are built to take advantage of how the business system uniquely processes sales and purchase orders so that EDI is aligned as tightly as possible with ERP processing.