The full purchasing chain in one application
- Client: anonymised
- Running since: 2008
The situation
A non-food wholesaler — comparable to Action, but business-to-business. Purchasing runs through hundreds of suppliers in Asia, and every order involves more than just a price and a quantity. Product data has to be right, because the lab has to confirm there are no prohibited substances involved. Customs wants HS and Taric codes. And in the end, everything has to fit in a container.
That process ran across separate files, emails and systems that didn't talk to each other.
What was built
One application supporting the entire purchasing chain, from quote request to goods received.
There's a link to the client's ERP system, from which product and supplier data is retrieved. Over seven hundred and fifty suppliers in China work in it themselves: they enter the product data the lab needs to test for substances such as phthalates. Customs clearance agents add the HS and Taric codes in the same application.
On the transport side there's a link to a container loading system, which calculates how many boxes of which size fit in a container — resulting in concrete loading advice for the supplier.
All communication in the chain runs through email, triggered from the application.
How it fits together
Two systems feed data in, three parties outside the organisation work in it directly, and one supported purchasing process comes out — from quote request to goods received.
The result
The purchasing chain is supported from one application, where the process used to run over separate files, e-mails and systems.
In that period it involved around fifteen thousand products and roughly ten thousand containers a year.
The application has been running since 2008 and is still maintained and extended.
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