Food Producer Uses EDI to Cut Operating Costs

DCS Guides them Through EDI Conversion

EDI Challenge

This DCS customer was migrating from a custom MRP/Accounting software application to JD Edwards’ EnterpriseOne™. Before the conversion, they were using Gentran Director Pro™. Since they had steadily grown their EDI program over the previous five years, the system was reaching its maximum recommended load. They liked the product, but they were out growing it. At the time, they were only receiving approximately 50% of their orders in EDI and all others were manually entered by their dedicated CSR staff. They also had only a small percent of the outbound invoices processing through EDI.

DCS Solution

DCS recommended and installed Gentran:Server™ for MicroSoft Windows Server™. DCS also developed all of the new integrated inbound order maps (850′s and 875′s) and outbound invoice maps (810′s and 880′s, and email invoices). The inbound maps are written directly to the JDE database using the ODBC functionality. DCS developed a unique solution for mapping invoices into Text formats for those brokers that do not have EDI capability. This has allowed 100% of all invoices for Brokers to be sent through the Gentran system either using traditional EDI or by using the e-mail mailboxing functionality. That’s right, no more Paper invoices to the Brokers! Everything is electronic. In addition DCS:

• Aggressively expanded their current EDI program by contacting current customers and brokers to initiate an EDI program.
• Added new integrated transactions with their external warehouses (940′s and 945′s).
• Researched, installed and implemented their AS2 program, dramatically cutting their communication costs.
• Developed and implemented supply side transactions with their Vendors

Result

Gentran:Server™ for Windows Server™ was a good fit for them. Since operational functionality was very similar to the Director product, the transition to Server was very easy. They were already trying to learn their new JDE system so an entirely new EDI system would have just added that much more complexity. DCS developed all of the EDI transactions so that current staff could focus on the new JDEdwards implementation. DCS developed foundation transactions so that when the ERP implementation was complete, their EDI staff could expand on those areas of the EDI program using internal resources. For example, DCS developed the 940/945, supply side transactions and vendor managed inventory transactions, and implemented and tested with the first trading partners. These transactions are used as a base to implement to other trading partners. DCS is still available for on-call or on-site support, but is rarely needed.

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