Gebufa sees strategic importance of EDI

Gebufa, a producer of mats, first began using EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) in 2007. Today, the company still relies on EDI from Descartes to keep its day-to-day order fulfillment running smoothly. The reason for this lies in the cost savings through automation and the speed with which Gebufa can respond to market demands.

“The added value of EDI is mainly on the sales side. I sometimes call it the lifeblood of the company. Without EDI, the overhead costs associated with manual processing would hamper our success.”

Henk van Dalfsen, Financial Director at Gebufa

The branches of Gebufa's customers are supplied decentrally thanks to the various European divisions. This means that the information of large numbers of transactions must be processed quickly, error-free and efficiently. Manual processing of orders means a large overhead cost. That is why automation with EDI was chosen.

Gebufa was founded in the mid-1980s as a producer of car mats. Later, interior mats were added under the Multimat branch. The company grew rapidly and between 2000 and 2006 expanded production and sales in the Czech Republic, Romania, Germany and France.

Thanks to the decentralized delivery capacity from the logistics center in the Czech Republic, Gebufa often sits at the table with major international players, including supermarket and do-it-yourself chains. The branches of those groups order themselves and that generates large numbers of transactions.

“In a market where price is a major selling point, manual processing of hundreds of messages per day would be a stumbling block due to the high overhead costs. We therefore opted for EDI with which the order forms, order confirmations, packing slips and invoices are sent automatically and in a standardized manner,” says Henk van Dalfsen, Financial Director.

It happens that customers ask Gebufa to use their own web-based solution for the ordering process, but Henk van Dalfsen emphasizes that because of the extra costs involved, EDI always turns out to be the best solution.

The order and delivery processes are fully automated thanks to EDI. As in many companies, EDI runs in the background and there is little need for intervention. “For us, the added value of EDI is mainly on the sales side. I sometimes call it the lifeblood of the company. If the connection were to fail tomorrow, we would immediately have a major problem.”

The collaboration with Descartes has been running smoothly for years. At the time, the ERP supplier recommended Descartes as the EDI provider. “Since our first messages via EDI in 2007, there has never been any reason to complain or change, so we are satisfied with the partnership,” confirms Henk van Dalfsen.

Process optimization - both the order and delivery processes are fully automated thanks to EDI. This allows Gebufa to efficiently meet customer requests.

Cost savings - thanks to reduced personnel costs, Gebufa can offer competitive prices to the market.

Less manual work - automation means fewer errors but also lower overhead costs.

Reliability - there is no need for intervention with EDI. This guarantees the continuity of the business.