Microsoft powers EDI at Brandix and Marks & Spencer
September 29, 2010 05:02 pm
The leading apparel manufacturer, Brandix, is reputed for its visionary leadership in the sector developing the brand to become an international tour de force. One of the key enablers of its phenomenal achievement has been the harnessing of Information and Technology (IT) systems that has unleashed the potential of the company and empowered it to forge enduring partnerships along the entire value chain. In its latest strategic move, Brandix has set up an Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) system in tandem with its key business partner, Marks & Spencer (M&S), and the winning solution to power the EDI system is Microsoft’s BizTalk Server.
The Brandix ICT team worked closely with M&S to pilot and adopt the EDI solution. Over a period of six months, both teams charted out their business requirements and the Brandix ICT team then set about its own R&D to identify the ideal EDI technology and how the solution should be structured to meet both current and future requirements of the business.
Commenting on the decision to adopt Microsoft BizTalk Server, Manoj Pilimatalawwe, Head of Group ICT at Brandix said: “We looked at available solutions in the market and wanted to select a technology that provided rich capability and features that can address both current and future business requirements. We have a considerable amount of IT workloads on Microsoft platform as a result of the Enterprise Agreement between Microsoft and Brandix. From the outset, my team was very confident that they could use this technology to address our requirements.”
EDI is an important aspect when considering Business to Business (B2B) systems integration in the modern world of electronic commerce. It often allows a company that initially implements Electronic Data Interchange to handle far bigger volumes without adding employees and other costs. This means increased sales and increased revenues once the initial investment in EDI is recaptured. These savings come from no data entry errors by operators, no mail time, lessens labour processing costs and time, lessen order cycle time and no filing and other processing of paperwork.
The solution enables M&S to place the order information directly with Brandix ICT systems and the merchandisers receive the PO details straight into their e-mail in-box, making it easy to track and manage communications and PO updates instantly. This has improved both accuracy and time to production, eliminating delays and potential errors of manual intervention. Once production is completed, the Brandix Logistics system will turnaround the PO to generate the invoice for the order. This is then transferred electronically and lodged with M&S SAP ERP system using the EDI facilities.
Sriyan de Silva Wijeyeratne, Country Manager, Microsoft Sri Lanka commented: “We are proud to have Microsoft BizTalk Server as the chosen EDI tool by Brandix to strengthen the supply chain with global brands such as M&S. BizTalk Server automates the exchange of internal business data as well as accepts EDI data, automatically integrating it with internal systems. The two organizations can rely wholly on the superior architecture and capabilities of BizTalk Server.”
Gaurika Wijerathne - Asst Manager Information Systems, one of the key members of the
Brandix ICT team who was responsible for driving the solution from the beginning, spoke about his experiences on the project: “This project was a real challenge as we had no previous experience and knowledge of how EDI solutions can be built. Working closely with the M&S team also had its advantages as we were able to define the exact requirements from M&S perspective and map them to our internal systems. We were able to launch the solution faster than we expected and completed the project in record time.”
With the roll-out of the ongoing ERP project at Brandix, the need for integration with other internal business systems and external systems of business partners will become mandatory.
Brandix is confident that the experience and knowledge gained from this project will enable them to embrace EDI as a strategic business enabler and transform the business processes by making them leaner and efficient giving the agility required to compete in a fast changing business world.