Automating EDI for supply chain efficiency

“Necessity is the mother of invention” — an old proverb that rings especially true today. Driven by change, uncertainty, and opportunity, businesses everywhere are innovating…

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OpenText

July 22, 20214 minutes read

Necessity is the mother of invention” — an old proverb that rings especially true today. Driven by change, uncertainty, and opportunity, businesses everywhere are innovating to survive and thrive. In small increments or giant leaps or somewhere in between, innovation is all around us. For WeFi Technology Group LLC (WeFi), innovation meant listening to its customers and drawing on its understanding of the market to challenge the status quo.

WeFiprovides innovative supply chain finance solutions to the information technology industry through a state-of-the-art, cloud-based platform that streamlines and automates the provision of services. Its cloud-based platform, IZZI, uses real-time analytics, automation and machine learning to make it easier and faster for users to exchange orders, invoices and other important supply chain documents. WeFi supports that platform with the help of OpenText Email2EDI, which seamlessly transforms printed and email documents into structured electronic data. Armand Brunelle, managing director of technology at WeFi, recently talked with OpenText about how his company is using Email2EDI to automate manual order processing across the supply chain.

Tell us about WeFi Technology Group

We provide channel finance for technology resellers and vendors. For example, technology vendors like Dell/EMC have resellers that sell their products, and WeFi provides short-term financing on behalf of the vendor for the reseller.

Why did IZZI, your cloud platform, need an electronic data interchange (EDI) solution?

We process tens of thousands of transactions in seconds in our cloud environment… All those interactions had to be automated to be efficient. We couldn’t have someone manually entering order approval data into the system. We literally couldn’t have a big enough staff to do that.

What led to the decision to choose OpenText™ Email2EDI?

OpenText was a known quantity, and I knew they were going to have the toolset we needed right out of the box… One of the things we like is that we’re able to get new vendors going quickly. There’s no heavy lifting on their part, other than to send us a sample invoice. The speed at which we can get Email2EDI up is much faster than trying to do an EDI project with the vendor.

Beyond the ease of bringing new customers on board, what other benefits have you found?

What’s nice about OpenText Email2EDI for clients and partners is that it’s transparent to them. They simply send an invoice via email the way they send it to anybody. We’re not asking them to do anything special, we’re not asking them to set up an EDI relationship. They like the simplicity and the ease of getting it set up.

OpenText Email2EDI is extremely efficient. We talk about the benefit of keeping fingers off the keyboards because as soon as fingers touch the keyboards, mistakes are made. In the finance business, we can’t have mistakes. So, to be able to use this product, not only do we save headcount, but it makes our transaction processing that much cleaner and error-free. From a value proposition perspective, the saving of headcount is huge, and eliminating the error risk is equally critical.

Did you have any challenges while getting started? How did OpenText help?

The OpenText team is very responsive. When we were first implementing EDI, we had a couple of bumps in the road, but we were able to get prompt resolutions. It’s about how people respond to issues, how quickly they respond and how effectively they respond, so that you don’t lose time or cause friction with customers. The OpenText B2B Managed Services team is on point managing all that.

What has this meant for WeFi’s business? And what’s your outlook going forward?

OpenText Email2EDI has certainly met our expectations. It’s working great, and we’re growing quickly. Over the last three to six months, we’ve added 50 resellers. We expect to have continued growth like that through 2021.

A commitment to delivering solutions that meet its customers’ needs is what drives innovation at WeFi. To learn more, read the full story.

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OpenText

OpenText, The Information Company, enables organizations to gain insight through market-leading information management solutions, powered by OpenText Cloud Editions.

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