Company Description
A mid-sized food manufacturer acquires another resulting in a 400% increase in EDI volume and a non-integrated EDI system
Summary
Finding themselves overwhelmed with EDI orders that required manual entry into Microsoft Dynamics GP, this food manufacturer needed an integrated EDI solution that would help them reduce manual efforts, better enable EDI workflows, and provide a lower cost of ownership. The company chose vSync EDI solutions because of it's ability to provide a return on investment, it's ability to accelerate the order-to-cash cycle, and the flexibility to select the most cost effective transmission solutions.
Key EDI & Shipping Issues
Business conditions can change quickly. Suddenly, the systems that worked just fine before are wreaking havoc on the organization forcing immediate change. This was the case with a mid-sized manufacturer of food products.
The company acquired another successful food manufacturer. The acquisition took the company from a $16 million dollar company to a $60 million dollar company overnight, resulting in a 400% increase in EDI order volume.
By the spring their employees were over tasked with the fallout that comes from non-integrated EDI systems. Their busy season didn’t start until the fall and they were already overwhelmed manually entering orders and invoices. One of their customers was getting ready to send 2,000 orders (all at once!) which they knew would completely swamp customer service.
One option they considered was to hire more staff for data entry. This option heightened their concern about the potential for errors during order entry. Charge-back fees had steadily increased since the acquisition – hiring more people could just exacerbate this problem.
As the volume of EDI increased so did their VAN fees. They needed to add additional EDI trading partners which would further compound their problems. Faced with an annual cost of nearly $18,000 they began seeking alternative solutions. Their goal was to eliminate as much manual processing as possible which in turn would lower charge-back fees. But there was still the problem of escalating VAN charges and the fact that their busy season was approaching and they needed a solution in place and ready to go in a matter of months.
A few other integrated EDI solutions were evaluated but they required the use of their proprietary VAN with non-competitive pricing. While these solutions integrated the EDI documents saving the company order entry time, each order still had to be manually reviewed and checked for errors before it could be released. Additionally if a batch of EDI orders was sent to Microsoft Dynamics GP and just one had an EDI error, the whole batch would fail. Batches could contain hundreds of orders. Users would need to find and fix the one erroneous document before the batch could be imported into Microsoft Dynamics GP successfully.
Problem Resolution & Results
The company chose vSync EDI solutions embedded inside Microsoft Dynamics GP for several reasons.
They liked that vSync EDI solutions were built specifically for Microsoft Dynamics GP. Their users learning curve was reduced because the system looked and behaved the same as the system they were used to. Choosing a solution built specifically for Microsoft Dynamics GP had additional advantages over other integrated EDI solutions.
vSync’s EDI includes configurable business rules which enable true exception management capabilities. Inbound and Outbound EDI documents are run through the vSync business rules engine to ensure orders received via EDI accurately comply with the associated rules for each particular trading partner. Microsoft Dynamics GP flags EDI documents that don’t pass a given business rule so that staff can focus on fixing those documents instead of reviewing each and every document for errors. The system tells the operator which documents had errors and defines what the errors are so staff can quickly fix the problem. Not only were the company’s EDI documents flowing into and out of Microsoft Dynamics GP with little manual effort, but the enhanced work-flow accelerated the order-to-cash cycle.
The company also liked the fact that vSync’s EDI solution is VAN agnostic, giving them the freedom to utilize any Value Added Network that could provide them with the best possible pricing. The company ended up reducing their monthly fees by $1,000 dollars per month.
Finally, vSync’s model for adding new trading partners quickly and easily was an additional deciding factor. Using vSync’s trading partner kits, the company could add new trading partners at a fixed cost with a repeatable process each time. Whenever an EDI customer changed their requirements, the company could quickly and easily accommodate the changes at no additional charge.
Choosing a company that has an in-depth understanding of Microsoft Dynamics GP proved to be a great benefit to this client. vSync support staff understand the way Microsoft Dynamics GP was designed to handle orders, invoices, and other processes and could easily make recommendations based on best practices vSync acquired from serving more than 800 Microsoft Dynamics GP customers. Today the company enjoys continued growth and is confident that the EDI system they installed is flexible and scalable to accommodate their future needs.