CLIENT BACKGROUND

A Minneapolis-based energy management company was faced with a mandate from a trading partner to implement GISB (Gas Industry Standards Board [now NAESB {North American Energy Standards Board}]) recommendations for the exchange of EDI documents.  The client was required to implement the GISB (now NAESB) recommendations in short order or risk serious disruptions to their business processes.

BUSINESS CHALLENGES:

	Implement a VAN (value-added network) to Internet conversion per GISB (now NAESB) guidelines.
	Automate the receipt of invoices from their trading partner.
	Seamless integration with their Access-based, order entry systems with one-click transmission of outgoing purchase orders ('Nominations').
	Accounting personnel needed a better way of consolidating incoming invoices and verifying the accuracy of these invoices.  Existing, paper-based system was cumbersome, error-prone and time-consuming.
	Needed to reduce dependance on a VAN (value-added network) to minimize monthly fees and per-transaction costs.

EDIGuys SOLUTIONS:

	Upgraded their EDI translation software to enable execution of custom PERL scripts to process incoming and outgoing EDI documents.
	Implemented a GISB- (now NAESB) compliant web portal to receive incoming EDI documents - system supported HTTP uploads, decryption and automatic loading of incoming data into an SQL server database.
	Recommended and installed Mercator (now the DataStage TX component [which is now called WebSphere Transformation Extender] of IBM's InfoSphere DataStage) as the mapping solution.  Integration of Mercator (see parenthetical statement in previous sentence) with web portal facilitated real-time access to incoming EDI data.
	Custom Intranet web application for use by accounting personnel to quickly verify accuracy of customer invoices.

BUSINESS BENEFITS:

	Total elimination of VAN charges and per-transaction fees resulting in savings of several thousand dollars per month.
	A robust, Internet-based, secure solution for the exchange of EDI documents with their trading partners.
	Migration from a paper-based system to an electronic system for the processing of invoices.  Dramatic drop in time-of-processing as well as error rates.
	Order of magnitude increase in business process efficiency.

For a free business system analysis call us at 1-877-EDI-GUYS or send us an email at mail@ediguys.net

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