Local agricultural company, Senwes Limited,has taken the bold step towards collaboration by providing a fully electronic supply chain capability to its suppliers. The new solution was configured and provided by IT infrastructure, solutions and services provider, Datacentrix.
Flip Fourie, eBusiness Manager at Senwes, says that in a highly competitive agricultural market, it is crucial to the organisation`s customers that the right product is available at the right time and at the right price. "The only way to achieve this is to improve co-operation and collaboration with our suppliers," he says. "Reducing cost and increasing efficiencies (inventory and procurement) will allow Senwes to provide improved service to our customers."
"Suppliers are in various stages of their own technical solution lifecycles and we cater for these by providing the ability to fit the Senwes business requirements in with these lifecycles," says Nico Strydom, account manager at Datacentrix.
According to Fourie, the implementation of the Datacentrix solution provided has resulted in an almost 90% reduction in errors, data loss and duplication. "Before, incorrect pricing and insufficient stock on orders resulted in a ton of duplication," he says.
The minimum requirement for a supplier would be Internet access and a browser expanding to the full system integration provided by formatted message exchange in its various forms (Electronic Data Interchange based on the agricultural standards as well as point-to-point XML are some of the system integration standards used). The opportunity therefore exists of supply chain integration to the majority of Senwes suppliers.
Basically, the supplier logs onto the system and confirms acceptance or changes an order. A changed order creates an exception business process involving Senwes procurement to resolve the exception and is presented again to the supplier, while an accepted order indicates confirmation. The accepted orders are handled depending on the supplier requirements.
"The issue of incorrect invoices has been greatly eradicated resulting in reducing the outstanding creditors` days to the benefit of the Senwes` suppliers," adds Fourie.
The solution is built on Sterling Integrator from Sterling Commerce and provides real-time business integration, business intelligence and business process management services to form flexible composite applications that support specific best practices within industries. Datacentrix is Sterling Commerce`s sole local business partner.
Based on the Sterling Integrator Multi-Enterprise Services Architecture, composite applications leverage the existing Senwes IT infrastructure, while providing new flexibility and visibility into value chain operations.
"Unlike monolithic enterprise applications, multi-enterprise composite applications are non-intrusive and easy to modify as business requirements or partnerships change," says Strydom.
Sterling Commerce composite applications are next-generation solutions for complex challenges such as global sourcing or regulatory compliance in multi-enterprise environments. These solutions offer users unprecedented visibility into value-chain processes, events and exceptions and facilitate responses such as redirecting orders, transferring inventory or alerting suppliers to changes in demand.
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