EDI in motion at BEXity
EDITEL puts EDI operation for BEXity on track
BEXity, one of Austria’s largest logistics service providers, moves more than 10,000 merchandise shipments per day. The behind-the-scenes EDI operations, which were entrusted to EDITEL at the beginning of this year, keep up with this speed of business.
“We get your products moving, whether in Austria or anywhere else in Europe.“ This is the mission of the former ÖBB subsidiary Q Logistics, which as of 1 January 2020 became part of the German investment company Mutares. The former ”general cargo and warehousing“ business unit of ÖBB-Holding and Quehenberger Logistics has been doing business under the new name of BEXity – an amalgam of the words ”flexibility“ and ”agility“ that also reflects the company‘s tradition and values. And yet, there were much bigger challenges than finding a new name: the entire existing IT infrastructure and with it the entire EDI system had to be removed from the former ÖBB architecture and transferred to a new environment. All that had to be done during ongoing operations, with as little client involvement as possible and on a tight schedule.
EDI for BEXity right on track
”Since we were dealing with time-critical processes involving a high data volume, we realized early on that we needed a true EDI expert with in-depth expertise and the human resources needed for this comprehensive and complex project,“ said Robert Blum, the director of IT at BEXity. The company chose to work with EDITEL, and they focused all their efforts on this monumental task. What made this task particularly challenging was mostly the myriad digital processes, which go well beyond the traditional ”order2cash“ procedure. At a logistics company of this size, many different data formats and processes, e.g., transport orders, consignment notes and invoices, are handled every day. And all these involve business partners who rely on many different communication channels. In total, approximately 250 EDI partners had to be migrated to the new environment on a very tight schedule following a strict security protocol. At the same time, 20 new partners had to be connected to the system. Another difficulty was the surrounding IT infrastructure that is a prerequisite for all EDI operations: among other things, five different locations and several IT systems had to be merged, which required a significant amount of coordination with other IT service providers who also worked on this project. In general, this was a very challenging task. That is why ”EDITEL was determined, from the very beginning, to manage the migration within the tight schedule without jeopardizing ongoing operations at BEXity in any way,“ said Gerd Marlovits, the CEO of EDITEL.
Moving things along
EDITEL successfully completed all necessary tasks by the project deadline. This meant that in just under nine months, everything that needed to happen did happen: moving an entire EDI system from one place to another without affecting ongoing operations in any way. It’s worth pointing out that due to the pandemic, none of the involved persons met in person during the entire course of the project. This means that all business and organizational decisions were made during virtual meetings. According to EDITEL project manager Jan Reichetzeder, it was ”mostly thanks to the continuous and good collaboration with our client“ that everything went so smoothly despite the difficult circumstances. This was also key for the client side: ”EDITEL took the initiative to manage communication processes with our EDI business partners and the previous ÖBB service providers, which turned out to be extremely useful for everybody involved,“ said Robert Blum. ”As the EDI service provider of choice, we reached all project goals, which established a solid basis for future projects with BEXity,“ said Gerd Marlovits, who looks forward to continuing on this high-speed journey.
In brief
- Smooth technical transition during ongoing operations and on a tight schedule
- Full EDI operations from a single source (”managed EDI services“)
- Project management by EDITEL involving all stakeholders
- Migration of EDI processes with 250 partners and onboarding process for 20 new partners
- Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the project was fully managed online
About BEXity
BEXity GmbH operates a comprehensive Austria-wide general cargo network, is the market leader for cross-border transport logistics and warehouse services on the Austrian market and provides a wide range of services to renowned clients. The company was fully acquired by the Mutares Group in late 2019, employs approximately 800 and in 2019 achieved sales of roughly EUR 210 million.
The press release “EDI in motion at BEXity” is also available as a download.
Symbolic image & Logo copyright BEXity GmbH