Boboli reduces order processing time by 75% thanks to EDI

Boboli Benelux BV has been making various bread specialties for customers throughout Europe for more than 25 years. Thanks to their flexible process, they can quickly respond to market demands. Many orders, packing slip messages and invoices are exchanged with trading partners every day. As the organization is growing, it has turned to Descartes EDI to make the ordering process more efficient and further automate it. The aim was to increase the number of orders to be processed, with the same number of employees. EDI created a more efficient process, eliminated the need for manual work, saved Boboli 75% in order processing time and enabled the continued growth of the company.

“The most striking advantage of EDI is the time savings on incoming orders. If you compare manually entering an order with entering it via EDI, it only takes 25% of the time with EDI. This process optimization ensures that we can grow without this having much impact on the order registration process.”

Henk Hop, IT Manager at Boboli

As a supplier of fresh food, a short order processing time is essential to meet customer expectations for delivery reliability and accuracy. Boboli found that the company's growth had an impact on order processing. The manual entry of each order took too much time and created a high workload for the team. A simpler and faster process had to provide the flexibility to efficiently process the increasing number of orders and boost customer satisfaction.

Boboli chose EDI from Descartes to automate the order process, especially for orders, digital packing slips (DESADV) and invoices.

“The switch to EDI has been a requirement of retail customers for quite some time. But for ourselves, it is obviously also an easy way of communicating,” says Henk Hop, IT Manager at Boboli.

Descartes' EDI solution enabled Boboli to automate and optimize the order process. Orders are received via EDI and automatically entered into the ERP system. At the time of shipment of the goods, Boboli automatically sends the DESADV message to the customer, which includes all relevant information, such as the number of items, pallets, batch numbers, best before dates and unique pallet codes. Invoices are also automatically generated and sent as soon as they have been created in the ERP system.

Another important aspect of the solution is the support of the Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) process. Boboli holds stock for customers and ships the goods to them, with the stock remaining the property of Boboli until the customer uses the goods. The system automatically generates orders at that time, resulting in seamless processing and invoicing. For both parties, the benefits of VMI are high product availability, fewer process steps and inventory reduction.

Currently approximately 400 orders are processed per week. Today, 80% of all transactions are via EDI. The move of more trading partners to EDI comes both proactively from Boboli to customers, and from customers themselves.

According to Henk Hop, one of the typical challenges in an EDI project is that often many parties are involved in setting up a connection: “Coordinating with each other about how everything should be set up can sometimes be a bit challenging. Especially when foreign customers are involved who have specific requirements. But once it's in place, you don't have to worry about it anymore.” The collaboration with the Descartes team is going well in that area.

By replacing a manual process with an automated system through EDI, the Boboli team only requires 25% of the time for processing orders with the same number of people.

Setting up new connections with trading partners and handling additional messages is easy with EDI. This gives Boboli the opportunity to quickly respond to changing customer expectations and retain customers.

Once everything is set up in the EDI solution, there is no need to worry anymore. The time this frees up can be spent on aspects of the business with more added value.

Within retail, EDI is the standard for exchanging messages. A supplier who cannot comply runs the risk of losing the customer. Boboli made a resolute choice for sustainable growth with EDI.

Every day, approximately 300 employees bake the most delicious savory products and more than 100 million freshly decorated bread specialties find their way to consumers in Europe. With customers in the retail, food service, inflight catering and petrol sectors, Boboli wants to offer the right solution for every segment.