Global Logistics and Supply Chain Strategies - July 2008 - (Page 10)

GL&SCS EXCLUSIVE concluded that the GIS product gave us the flexibility we needed to move the 90 percent of our data that was still mainframebased and also the ability to plug and play all of our other applications. ume customers first. One of the big advantages of GIS is that we are now able to on-board customers and get them on the system more quickly. Before, the process for creating translation maps was a little clunky. Now we have an analyst do the upfront work and then a developer comes in and sets up the mailboxes and does the mapping. The analyst who does the upfront work actually can be a fairly non-technical person, which is great because we don’t have to tie up a programmer or developer. That is also the case when it comes to troubleshooting issues. Now an analyst can get in there and look at the data, whereas before it took a programmer to go behind the scenes and figure out what had gone wrong when there was a problem with data transmissions. We are limited in the number of programmers we there to the customer’s IP address. The customer receives it and we get an acknowledgment that it was received. Then they process it however they want. Q: Do you use GIS for internal integration as well as with customers and vendors? Sheridan: Yes, we are using it for better communications internally. There is a lot of mapping that needs to be done to connect one system with another and it is best to have an independent solution for that rather than one that is oriented toward one system or the other. GIS has been great for that. Plus, we are beginning to look at the EDI capabilities of our other back office systems, like our Lawson financial system. We have not used EDI to move data between these systems before because we Q: You are also using GIS to connect to Customs? Sheridan: Yes. U.S. Customs was by volume the biggest partner that we worked with. It is a very important partner because we can be assessed heavy fines if we don’t get information to them in a timely and accurate fashion. You obviously want your customers to be happy, but you definitely have to be sure the government is happy! Also, because Customs represented our biggest volume of EDI traffic, it presented a big savings opportunity. Moving Customs off the VAN service saved us about $7,500 a month. And, by eliminating this extra step, An analyst can get in there and look at the data, whereas before it took a programmer to go behind the scenes and figure out what had gone wrong when there was a problem with data transmissions. would have had to send it to the mainframe and then back out. Now, with GIS, the mainframe doesn’t need to be involved at all. Data could go to Lawson, through GIS and out to the customer and then back from the customer, through GIS and into Lawson. We also are looking at our transportation systems, intermodal systems, human resources and PeopleSoft applications, asking if there are any opportunities to use EDI where we haven’t used it in the past. The biggest obstacle we have there is just having enough people to do it all. have, and programmers are more expensive than analysts, so being able to use the analysts to do a lot of that work is a savings and a process improvement. Tracking with this product also is a lot easier because, if we fail to get an expected acknowledgment, we can respond accordingly. And we save all the communications, so if there should be a failure, we have the history to go back and see why something was not received. Basically, the EDI standards are well defined. For example, an EDI 310 is a shipping invoice and all customers expect the same information to be contained in a 310 transmission. Sometimes a customer or vendor may use a field a little differently than we do and we may have to do a little work there to make sure things align, but it is mostly just defining the connectivity. They will give us the IP address we are going to send to and we will set up a mailbox on our side that will receive the data and route it to that IP address. For example, when we create a bill of lading on our side, it triggers us to create the 310. This goes to the mailbox and from we have fewer potential failure points and a smoother transportation process. Q: Are there other non-financial benefits? Sheridan: The biggest thing for us was just getting on a standardized platform. Before it was like patching something with duct-tape to do any non-mainframe-based EDI. Each time you were building something that may work, but that was not reliable and required a lot of troubleshooting. With everything on the same platform, maintenance is much easier. Now that we have gotten our heavy hitters off the mainframe we are exploring other ways to take advantage of the GIS product. We see a lot of potential areas; it’s just a matter of diving in and getting it done. To access this article online, visit The Digital Edition at www.SupplyChainBrain.com. Q: How did the implementation go? Sheridan: We have an integration team here that implemented the foundation, so I really wasn’t involved in that. It seemed easy to me, but it may not have been so easy to the team doing the work. I know that it didn’t take very long. My team did the on-boarding of customers and all the mapping for the transmissions. Then it was just a matter of getting an understanding of the mailboxes that are used. As I mentioned before, we targeted our big vol- Resource Links Sterling Commerce, www.sterlingcommerce.com Crowley Maritime, www.crowley.com 12 JULY 2008 www.SupplyChainBrain.com http://www.SupplyChainBrain.com http://www.sterlingcommerce.com http://www.crowley.com http://www.SupplyChainBrain.com

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Global Logistics and Supply Chain Strategies - July 2008 Contents Editorial GL&SCS Exclusive Fastforward Up Front Introduction Menlo Worldwide & Electrolux PathGuide Technologies & Tile City Servigistics & Juniper Networks Transplace & Rock-Tenn ClearOrbit & Blue Bell Creameries Cadec Global & Northwest Food Products Transportation CaseStack & Greystar Products NGC & Parigi Group Supply Chain Consultants & Constar TransGroup Worldwide & Surgiquip Terra Technology & Campbell Soup Baxter Planning Systems & SGI Cadre Technologies & Kansas City SmartPort TransportGistics & FMC Technologies DSC Logistics & Tree of Life FORTE & Vera Bradley Penske Logistics & Eaton Cardinal Logistics & Weyerhaeuser JPMorgan & Black & Decker Opinion Opinion Industry Voices

Global Logistics and Supply Chain Strategies - July 2008

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