Cleo

Krispy Kreme, a global doughnut and coffeehouse chain, faced a significant challenge in its supply chain operations. The company needed to deliver millions of freshly baked goods to hundreds of stores every 2 to 4 hours. The challenge was to do this quickly and cost-effectively. The company's focus was to improve its supply chain operations by better managing high volumes of data transactions.

Burris Logistics, a family-owned business operating for 89 years, was facing a significant challenge. The company, which provides retail and food distribution, warehousing, and transportation solutions, was struggling with a time-consuming integration cycle. This cycle was negatively impacting the company's bottom line, eating into profits and reducing efficiency. The company needed to streamline this process to improve its operations and financial performance. The focus was to simplify and accelerate trading partner integration and efficiently manage complex data capture and transfer.

Century Distribution Systems was facing challenges with data integration and exception handling. The company was using multiple systems to handle customers’ EDI transactions and data integration mapping, which resulted in inefficient use of time in the creation and maintenance of custom interfaces. Each customer had unique requirements in terms of how they store and receive data from customers, suppliers, and partners. Century was using multiple applications for EDI data integration and to build interfaces from start to finish for each data feed. This significantly slowed the process of getting customers up and running and proved to be an inefficient use of resources. Another challenge was exception handling. An error in a purchase order or invoice could mean a delay in shipment, which ultimately damages relationships and potentially incurs significant fees.

Mount Vernon Mills (MVM) is a diversified manufacturer of textile and related products for various markets. They have a central philosophy of doing whatever it takes to satisfy the customer, which includes end-to-end automation of the exchange of complex business processes and transaction data. However, they faced challenges with their legacy EDI system which had become extremely expensive in terms of labor for the custom code needed to both use and maintain the software system. They also had to deal with 'Swivel Chair Integration', a time-consuming and error-prone process of manually transferring data from one application to another.

Woodstream, a provider of wildlife and pest control systems, lawn and garden products, and pet supplies, was informed by their legacy EDI system provider that their product would no longer be supported. This meant that Woodstream would have to go through a complete conversion and platform change to use the vendor’s supported solution. As the team was establishing requirements for a new system, they uncovered needs beyond traditional EDI. They needed an automated way to accept and integrate formats such as spreadsheets, flat files, and XML. They also pinpointed a need for A2A integration to automate and synchronize sharing of data between disparate applications and platforms for better reporting and improved internal business processes.

Citizen, a market leader in the mid-priced watch category in North America, was facing a challenge in responding to the demands of internal departments and external customers and partners quickly and cost-effectively. Their legacy EDI system was not efficient enough and required custom code for operations, which was time-consuming and lacked data visibility.

Maple Leaf Farms, America’s premier producer of quality duck products, has thousands of customers, ranging in size and type from large retailers and food suppliers, to small Chinatown restaurants and markets. While the restaurant owners may not use EDI and business integration, most of Maple Leaf’s customers rely on it for accuracy, speed and efficiency. In fact, Maple Leaf has 100 trading partners, and sends and receives 2500 EDI transactions per month in more than a dozen different transaction formats. The challenge was to handle the high-speed exchange of B2B electronic trading documents and rapid set up of new trading relationships, but also facilitate automatic integration of these documents in the applications, systems and processes used by the company — without custom coded interfaces.

C.R. England, the largest temperature-controlled carrier in the world, was facing a challenge in providing frequent, real-time communication and shipment status reports within the supply chain. The company needed to find a way to improve communication between trucks on the road, shipping, and customers, while also automating day-to-day EDI operations. The challenge was to do this quickly and cost-effectively.

The Apparel Group Ltd., a company established in 1988 under a strategic partnership with TAL Apparel Ltd in Hong Kong, faced several challenges. The company, which operates over 30 department stores and MMRS, over 1,000 specialty retailers, and over 15 e-commerce retailers, sought to add more value to its customers, be more accessible to new business, and improve its operational processes. The company's change in its business model necessitated a change in its IT environment. The focus was to move to a single-sourced, multi-platform integration tool to save time, increase efficiency, and improve visibility.

DART, the 14th-largest truckload carrier in America, was facing a challenge in improving its EDI communication speed, quality, and security to become more compatible with its trading partner systems. The company was looking for a solution to replace its current EDI integration system to reduce EDI transaction times and eliminate high VAN service costs.

USA TRUCK, a company with over 30 years of experience in general commodities transport, was facing a challenge. They needed to better manage their transaction loads and ensure more efficient, secure communications with their trading partners. The company was looking for a solution that could replace their current EDI integration system with a system that has multi-threading capabilities and greater data visibility.

Rosenau Transport, a full-service transportation services company, was using manual processes such as telephone and email communication to issue tender documents. However, its customers requested the company to adopt EDI technology to streamline and improve their logistical requirements. Rosenau’s IT department consisted of a single programmer, so when the company began searching for an EDI solution to meet its needs, it sought one that was easy-to-implement and use while not requiring an extensive amount of custom coding.

Sleep Innovations, a multimillion-dollar manufacturer of foam bedding and sleep products, was facing a challenge with its legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. The software was not compatible with two of Sleep Innovation’s key customers, resulting in inefficient, and at times impossible, exchange of information. Furthermore, the company realized its existing ERP was inadequate for meeting the company’s growing demand. To meet its customers’ growing requests, Sleep Innovations implemented Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne ERP suite. However, its legacy EDI system could no longer manage all the transactions required in the company’s supply chain process. This was because the existing EDI system could not handle certain EDI transactions demanded by customers.

Dorcy, a company that has been marketing flashlights for over 55 years and supplies major retailers such as Wal-Mart, Lowe's, and Sears, faced a significant challenge. The company needed to implement an automated e-business solution to manage its global supply chain operations quickly and cost-effectively. The focus was to find a robust integration solution that could help reduce high VAN cost and be rapidly deployed with minimal staff involvement.

Mrs. T’s Pierogies, a small food producer, was facing challenges in meeting the complex EDI requirements of large trading partners with a small staff of just two people. Manual checks on automated orders were time-consuming, taking up to an hour a day. The company needed an efficient system to automate order taking and improve staff productivity. The company's customers ranged from small markets to the largest supermarket chains in the country, and they needed to comply with customer mandates for EDI.

Challenge Dairy was facing a bottleneck to company growth due to their antiquated EDI system. The legacy EDI translator was unreliable, often losing data and lacking an error notification system. This led to missed orders, unreliable invoice transmission, and occasional charge-backs and penalties. The system required constant manual intervention and could not be customized or provide to other applications. It required one full-time-equivalent (FTE) to manage daily activities. End user departments did not have access to transaction and order data. Documents would get lost, and connectivity with customers was not readily verifiable by users due to inaccessibility to acknowledgements and transaction history. The company was also threatened with missing out on new revenue opportunities as new customers often waited weeks or even months to begin active trading.

Maines Paper & Food Service, Inc., the seventh largest broad-line distributor in the United States, faced a significant challenge. The company needed to meet new customer demands, which included the rapid adoption of new business processes and an increase in service level agreements. The challenge was to implement these changes quickly and cost-effectively. The focus was to implement a single B2B platform for all internal and external integration that Maines' existing IT team could easily deploy and manage.

Lipari Foods, a food distribution company with over 60 years of experience, faced a significant challenge. The company aimed to grow its trading partner base from 150 partners to 1,000 partners in under two years. This rapid expansion required a solution that could integrate with non-EDI trading partners to eliminate custom coding and error-prone manual data entry. The company needed a solution that could adapt quickly to partners' systems, reduce shipping errors and billing discrepancies, and minimize manual entry.

Covenant Transport, a top U.S. revenue-generating truckload carrier, was facing a challenge. The company needed to manage increased interactions between carriers and trading partners while upgrading from the AS/400 platform. The company was looking for a scalable integration solution that could be configured with new technology and business processes. The solution needed to seamlessly integrate with the IBM platform, internal applications like TMW Suite, and trading partners.