Colruyt Improves Supplier Communications, Order-to-Cash Process
Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Region
- Europe
Country
- Belgium
- France
- Luxembourg
Product
- webMethods Integration Platform
- webMethods Trading Networks
Tech Stack
- Electronic Data Integration (EDI)
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Productivity Improvements
- Cost Savings
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
Applicable Industries
- Retail
Applicable Functions
- Logistics & Transportation
- Procurement
Use Cases
- Supply Chain Visibility
- Inventory Management
Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
Etablissementen Franz Colruyt N.V., usually known simply as Colruyt, is a Belgian family company that is one of the major players in the country’s retail network. Founded in 1925 by Franz Colruyt, the group today operates a large number of retail brands, most significantly its discount supermarket chain. The company has more than 20,000 employees with headquarters in Halle and operations in Belgium, France, and Luxembourg.
The Challenge
The Colruyt Group, a major player in Belgium's retail network, was struggling with inefficient communications and order management due to the use of manual processes and homegrown solutions. The company, which operates a vast network of retailers, distributors, and suppliers, found that these methods no longer met its need for efficient communications and order management. The existing process used manual processes for orders, invoicing, and change orders, resulting in inaccurate orders and drawn-out order-to-cash timeframes.
The Solution
Colruyt sought to improve communications between suppliers and stores and eliminate manual, paper-intensive processes by implementing Software AG's webMethods Integration Platform for efficient and accurate Electronic Data Integration (EDI). The IT group set a goal to achieve three-way matching—an automatic mapping between orders to suppliers, delivery notes, and invoices to all internal and external customers and suppliers. By adopting a phased approach, Colruyt was able to quickly leverage the Software AG webMethods platform to optimize its processes to be more accurate and efficient while increasing the capacity to process orders. The ultimate goal is to go paperless and further improve communications with suppliers.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
Case Study missing?
Start adding your own!
Register with your work email and create a new case study profile for your business.
Related Case Studies.
Case Study
Improving Production Line Efficiency with Ethernet Micro RTU Controller
Moxa was asked to provide a connectivity solution for one of the world's leading cosmetics companies. This multinational corporation, with retail presence in 130 countries, 23 global braches, and over 66,000 employees, sought to improve the efficiency of their production process by migrating from manual monitoring to an automatic productivity monitoring system. The production line was being monitored by ABB Real-TPI, a factory information system that offers data collection and analysis to improve plant efficiency. Due to software limitations, the customer needed an OPC server and a corresponding I/O solution to collect data from additional sensor devices for the Real-TPI system. The goal is to enable the factory information system to more thoroughly collect data from every corner of the production line. This will improve its ability to measure Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) and translate into increased production efficiencies. System Requirements • Instant status updates while still consuming minimal bandwidth to relieve strain on limited factory networks • Interoperable with ABB Real-TPI • Small form factor appropriate for deployment where space is scarce • Remote software management and configuration to simplify operations
Case Study
How Sirqul’s IoT Platform is Crafting Carrefour’s New In-Store Experiences
Carrefour Taiwan’s goal is to be completely digital by end of 2018. Out-dated manual methods for analysis and assumptions limited Carrefour’s ability to change the customer experience and were void of real-time decision-making capabilities. Rather than relying solely on sales data, assumptions, and disparate systems, Carrefour Taiwan’s CEO led an initiative to find a connected IoT solution that could give the team the ability to make real-time changes and more informed decisions. Prior to implementing, Carrefour struggled to address their conversion rates and did not have the proper insights into the customer decision-making process nor how to make an immediate impact without losing customer confidence.
Case Study
Digital Retail Security Solutions
Sennco wanted to help its retail customers increase sales and profits by developing an innovative alarm system as opposed to conventional connected alarms that are permanently tethered to display products. These traditional security systems were cumbersome and intrusive to the customer shopping experience. Additionally, they provided no useful data or analytics.
Case Study
Ensures Cold Milk in Your Supermarket
As of 2014, AK-Centralen has over 1,500 Danish supermarkets equipped, and utilizes 16 operators, and is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. AK-Centralen needed the ability to monitor the cooling alarms from around the country, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Each and every time the door to a milk cooler or a freezer does not close properly, an alarm goes off on a computer screen in a control building in southwestern Odense. This type of alarm will go off approximately 140,000 times per year, equating to roughly 400 alarms in a 24-hour period. Should an alarm go off, then there is only a limited amount of time to act before dairy products or frozen pizza must be disposed of, and this type of waste can quickly start to cost a supermarket a great deal of money.
Case Study
Supermarket Energy Savings
The client had previously deployed a one-meter-per-store monitoring program. Given the manner in which energy consumption changes with external temperature, hour of the day, day of week and month of year, a single meter solution lacked the ability to detect the difference between a true problem and a changing store environment. Most importantly, a single meter solution could never identify root cause of energy consumption changes. This approach never reduced the number of truck-rolls or man-hours required to find and resolve issues.
