Customer stories

Esprinet

Esprinet streamlines electronic document exchange with OpenText. OpenText B2B Managed Services removes burden of set-up and maintenance, provides greater automation and improves efficiency

Challenges

  • Speed of establishing and maintaining data mapping for electronic document exchange with suppliers and customers
  • Increasing automation and streamlining data interchange with other internal systems
  • Poor control and checks of directly shipped consignments from supplier to customer

Results

  • Data mappings are seamlessly maintained providing faster updates and reducing workload

  • Automation improves business processes with faster throughput and processing

  • Secure, reliable data interchange

Story

For more than a decade, many of Esprinet’s large suppliers have mandated Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) as the only means to exchange documentation relating to orders. These include the orders themselves, acknowledgements, shipping notices, receipts, invoices and credit notes. Having researched potential solution suppliers, Esprinet selected OpenText and established their first connections, mapping the various data points internally to enable the exchange of data.

Inside a warehouse.

OpenText B2B Managed Services enables us to save time, to reduce the potential of human error during data entry, and it provides us with a complete audit trail.

Massimo Patrussi
System Development Manager, Esprinet

Quicker set-up for new data mappings and updates

With a growing number of suppliers moving to EDI, Esprinet found it was expending greater amounts of precious internal resource on establishing new connections. Each connection would have its own nuances, unique data points, and these all had to be taken into account. Added to this, many existing suppliers would periodically require changes to be implemented.

Massimo Patrussi, System Development Manager at Esprinet SpA explained, “We turned once again to OpenText to explore more efficient and effective ways of administering our trading partner data mappings. The answer was OpenText B2B Managed Services. We now simply inform OpenText of our requirements and they take care of setting up the necessary configurations, calling upon their extensive experience and knowledge of numerous data standards.”

Being able to release staff from the workload involved in establishing and maintaining these connections has meant that focus can be applied elsewhere.

Greater efficiency through automation

When a supplier submits an invoice to Esprinet, procedures are now in place to automatically check that the invoice is correct.

“With the data received via B2B Managed Services, the system now quickly and automatically checks the invoice against a PO, confirming goods have been received and match delivery notes. We’re then able to automatically pass the data to our core financial systems. This all saves time, reduces the potential of human error during data entry, and provides us with a complete audit trail,” added Patrussi.

Not only does Esprinet receive documentation from trading partners via B2B Managed Services, but the company also sends documents too. Orders can be sent quickly and efficiently upon receipt from customers, speeding up delivery times in a time-sensitive market.

Using a single, Esprinet document format simplifies internal processes

With OpenText taking care of document mappings on behalf of Esprinet, not only has this released valuable internal resource, it also means that they can work to a single, internal format.

“We used to have to manage multiple document/data mappings ourselves. Now we have our own standard and rely on OpenText to map that to the standards used by external parties, saving time, avoiding errors and reducing the maintenance overhead too,” said Patrussi.

Should we have a change to our trading partner data mappings, or should a new partner come on board, we know that we can rely on OpenText to take care of things for us quickly and efficiently.

Massimo Patrussi
System Development Manager, Esprinet

When a new supplier or customer comes on board, everyone at Esprinet knows they will quickly be up and running, thanks to the responsive service provided by OpenText.

“Like others in the organization, our purchasing department is very happy with the service provided by the OpenText solution. They no longer have to manually process purchase orders, perhaps placing them onto a supplier portal, producing PDF documents and sending emails. They simply select the order in their system, click to send and the order is transferred by B2B Managed Services to the supplier. Manual work is dramatically reduced, as are errors,” said Patrussi.

The purchasing department also benefit from an immediate response and acknowledgement of the order being accepted from the supplier. They can then easily track progress as updates from the supplier are automatically fed back into their purchasing system via OpenText.

Esprinet customers benefit from improved stock information

Using B2B Managed Services, suppliers also provide regular stock and delivery information to Esprinet. This data is then automatically used to update inventory and to provide detail of expected deliveries to customers.

“Where a product is not in stock or is awaiting shipping, our customers are able to view expected delivery dates. This data is automatically and seamlessly received, processed and updated onto our website thanks to the data received with OpenText,” said Patrussi.

The accounting department benefits too, with greatly reduced manual data entry, reporting is more up to date, there are fewer errors and automatic checks help highlight exceptions where manual intervention is required. The whole solution helps Esprinet meet Italian fiscal rules too, with full audit trails and reporting.

Esprinet sends and receives about half a million documents every year via B2B Managed Services using the OpenText™ Trading Grid™ Messaging Service. Handling such volumes manually would be a monumental task, even if trading partners would allow it, which most would not.

“We’re constantly looking at how we can further improve or automate our processes,” said Patrussi. “Should that involve a change to our trading partner data mappings, or should a new partner come on board, we know that we can rely on OpenText to take care of things for us quickly and efficiently.”

About Esprinet

Esprinet is a wholesale technology distributor in Italy and Spain with consolidated sales of €2.3 billion in 2014. The company was established in the 1970s and today supplies more than 600 brands to more than 40,000 resellers. The business has grown to be No. 1 in Italy, No. 3 in Spain, and fifth overall in Europe. Esprinet’s unique internet-based business model is especially focused on delivering technology to resellers that address the small-to-midsize business sector, retailers, and corporates. Top brand names, such as Apple, IBM, HP, Toshiba, and Lenovo, among many others, form the portfolio offered by Esprinet. The range of technology embraces personal computers, tablets, supplies, consumer electronics, servers, networking, storage, peripherals, and software with more than 45,000 Stock Keeping Units (SKUs).