Freudenberg Household Products Deploys Crossgate EDI Solutions to Connect Customers to Global SAP System
Crossgate Provides a Seamless and ‘Invisible’ Customer Migration
Atlanta – Georgia on 28 January 2008
Companies today are looking for reliable and cost-effective ways to improve their in-house business processes and many of these companies are enhancing their Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) systems to work with XML and Web services technologies. While EDI has been around for many years, it remains the leading technology for communicating business transactions like purchase orders, invoices and advance shipping notices. In fact most companies’ core business transactions are EDI.
For Freudenberg, receiving purchase orders and sending out shipping notifications and invoices using EDI is the lifeblood of its business. Today, more than 85 percent of Freudenberg’s revenue is generated from orders that come through EDI, so it was critical that its Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system from SAP operated seamlessly with EDI transactions received from its customers in the U.S.
Serving over 60 enterprise customers in the U.S, Freudenberg, a cleaning products company based in Northlake, Ill., has been in business selling well-known O-Cedar cleaning products since 1906 and has continued to provide competitively priced and “hard-working” cleaning products. Freudenberg was the first company to produce an oil-treated dust mop, to market the squeeze-action sponge mop, and to introduce a lightweight, washable plastic angle broom.
In order to maintain its commitment to product and customer service excellence as the company expanded in the U.S., Freudenberg realized that it needed a global EDI solution that was easy to deploy, seamless to customers during deployment and would support numerous user interfaces utilized by its customers, many of whom are Fortune 500 companies.
Business Objectives are Met
So why did Freudenberg choose the Crossgate solution? After researching EDI tools for ERP systems, Freudenberg selected Crossgate to enable its ERP system to more effectively process and view customer EDI transactions. The beauty of the Crossgate deployment was the fact that within four months, Freudenberg had completed the deployment and most importantly the customer never noticed.
“The Crossgate implementation was completely invisible to the customer!” said Stefan Roehrig, Director Information Technology NAFTA at Freudenberg.
Today, Freudenberg supports more than 150 interfaces allowing customers to send and receive business transactions quickly and efficiently from all over the world. With Freudenberg’s new EDI-enabled ERP system, the company can import specific data, such as order forms or invoices and process them in an easy-to use interface. The intuitive user interface also improved how Freudenberg modifies existing orders.
“With Crossgate, our customers can send orders via EDI and we can read them without any problems in our SAP environment. I’m very satisfied with how the implementation has improved our ability to interface with our customers and process all purchase orders, shipping notifications and invoices. We also saved approximately $700,000 in license fees compared with our old global contract,” Roehrig added.
Roehrig concluded, “Our customers have not realized the transition has taken place. We continue to receive orders and not a single customer has noticed a change. For me and my integration team, that is the ultimate compliment.”
Summary of the business advantages:
• Invisible integration with customers’ EDI systems worldwide
• Significant cost and time savings
• Seamless integration with existing IT Infrastructure
• Global solution that enables EDI transactions in an SAP ERP environment
“Migrating to a new EDI solution has traditionally been a painful and cost intensive project. However, Crossgate’s B2B 360o Services for SAP Solutions eliminates those pains for global companies like Freudenberg,” said Scott Lewin, President, Crossgate, Inc. “Our focus on the Business Ready Network, reusable partner profiles, and fixed cost enablement is changing the way the market will implement future EDI projects.”
Crossgate, Inc.
Crossgate provides electronic data interchange (EDI) and related services as an on-demand Business Ready Network. The heart of the system is the worlds largest B2B transaction network (B.I.P.). More than 34,000 companies already use B.I.P. to exchange documents and data regardless of format and across all media. The new B2B 360° Services, powered by SAP®, gives customers instant access from their SAP® system to all business partners integrated in the platform.
Crossgate is represented in Europe at five sites in Germany, with subsidiary branches in London, Milan, and Paris. For further information, see www.crossgategroup.com.
