As it grew to become the second-largest cooperative grocery wholesaler in the , Associated Wholesale Grocers of Kansas City (AWG) knew it had to rapidly transform itself away from internally-developed automation systems and labor-intensive business processes for maintaining data about the items it bought, stored, sold, and shipped.  At one time an AWG assessment determined that more than half of their item data had some errors associated with it.  AWG recognized that this posed a significant risk to their business, not only through unnecessary costs and lost productivity internally, but it also had the potential for putingt them at a competitive disadvantage in terms of time-to-market and control of inventory costs.

AWG laid down a revolutionary vision and direction to identify and implementing best-of-breed enterprise-wide automation solutions while at the same time committing itself to adhere to and enforce industry standards to streamline its entire supply chain management process.  They selected AquiTec’s world-class Web-based eProcurement and eBilling products as the base to build their supply chain management solution, and chose Risetime to provide all software development services to AWG related the AquiTec products, including application updates, new system features, and 2^nd and 3^rd tier production support.     

Solution Overview

AquiTec’s eProcurement product provides AWG the capability to identify items based on a worldwide industry-standard identification number known as a Global Trade Identification Number (GTIN) and to identify vendors and vendor shipping locations using a standard Global Location Number (GLN).  Once the eProcurement product was in production, AWG swiftly initiated a project known throughout its industry as data synchronization.  The goal of the Data Sync project was to use GTINs to interface to the GS1 Global Registry, a global electronic network of certified data pools that permit suppliers worldwide to register items and their associated attributes using GTINs as their identification key.  Data recipients like AWG can then subscribe to and receive this item data via standard XML messages for integration into their own automation systems and business processes.   

Risetime consultants assumed responsibility for providing an integrated data synchronization solution for AWG.  Using its expertise in Web-based technologies, including XML messaging and asynchronous messaging middleware such as IBM’s WebSphere MQ product, AWG IT and Risetime consultants implemented an architecture using LANSA’s Data Sync Direct product to interface to the U.S. certified data pool provided by 1SYNC (formally UCCnet and Transora).  Working hand-in-hand with AWG, Risetime consultants helped create an architecture where item subscription messages, data change notification messages, and data synchronized confirmation messages – all implemented using XML - are passed back and forth electronically and seamlessly between the eProcurement system and the 1SYNC data pool without any manual intervention required.  The item attribute information contained in these messages are processed according to a rules-based system implemented by Risetime consultants that can either automatically accept item attribute values and store them directly in the eProcurement database or queue the message for user review and action if the changes fall outside of quality control parameters.

Value Measurement

The implementation of the data synchronization project eliminated the labor-intensive process of manually communicating and keying in new item data as well as editing and maintaining changes to existing item definitions.  This has lead to some significant business benefits to AWG:

• Faster time-to-market for new items through better automation of the new item introduction process.
• Reduced invoice errors and reconciliation costs.
• Better inventory management through more accurate and timely item dimension information, improved order quality, and better invoice/purchase order matching.
• Improved throughput and faster turnaround time in the ordering and distribution process.
• Elimination of item data inaccuracies introduced through manual communication and labor-intensive data entry processes, and reduced costs spent on item data maintenance.
• Establishment of a flexible, scalable solution on which future collaborative supply chain management solutions and products can be built or integrated.

For its groundbreaking efforts, AWG was recognized with two prestigious industry awards: the Collaborative Retailer Trading Partner of the Year by Consumer Goods Technology magazine, and the Technology Excellence Award in the wholesaler category by Supermarket News magazine.

To find out how Risetime can bring exceptional results like these to your business, contact us.