EAI software helps speed-up deliveries for freight company Royal Arctic LineCustomer Story Royal Arctic Line and IBS have collaborated on an integrated IT solution that speeds up freight deliveries to Greenland. To many people, Greenland means extreme climate, glaciers, global warming, and polar bears. But this self-governing territory of Denmark is also the site of supply chain and IT innovation.
Royal Arctic Line's EAI solution is based on IBS Integrator and uses WebServices communications, XML and other components to let Royal Arctic Line customers create sales orders in their native systems while creating bookings automatically in Royal Arctic Line’s ERP system. The solution is fast, transparent and seamless, and places no additional demands on customer users.
Need for seamless integration
Whenever a Greenlander uses a tool, or drives a snowmobile or car, Royal Arctic Line and IBS have driven the supply chain for those products. Royal Arctic Line’s primary business is freighting cargo to and from Greenland. The parent company, Royal Arctic Line Ltd, is owned by the Home Rule Government of Greenland and is the predominant shipper of goods, including fuel, to the island. Royal Arctic Line wanted to allow its larger customers, who use disparate systems, to create automatic bookings in Royal Arctic Line’s ERP system. The solution would have to be seamless and transparent, without changing visible business processes or system transactions of Royal Arctic Line’s customers. The shipping firm also wanted an enhancement of its ERP solution to handle other business processes for its customers, including sales order confirmations, invoices, credit notes and route schedules. Specific requirements that Royal Arctic Line wanted from IBS were aimed at making a painless transformation for the company’s customers. Users would not have to leave their own systems, re-enter information or have any knowledge or use of Royal Arctic Line’s solution. Transactions and information transmissions had to be fast, and the solution had to be open, portable and platform-independent.
Postbox structure for customers
Royal Arctic Line’s solution is based on IBS Enterprise Application Integration software, IBS Integrator, which reads, writes and converts information from any platform to most databases. The solution is structured like a postbox system, whereby every Royal Arctic Line customer has its own postbox. The postbox holds documents that are sent and received between the company and each customer. Security rights and document access for postbox users are maintained via HTTP. Customers can choose direct communication via either WebServices or FTP-to-WebServices.
Royal Arctic Line customers can create minor modifications to their own systems in order to export sales orders as XML documents. These are uploaded automatically to an FTP server hosted by Royal Arctic Line’s ERP solution. There, the IBS EAI solution is triggered to find and process the documents into a database, where they reside as unread by Royal Arctic.
When Royal Arctic Line checks its postbox, the sales order is transformed into a booking on Royal Arctic Line’s ERP solution. A message confirms the booking; or, in case of error, the XML document is sent back to the customer’s postbox for retrieval at any time. This sequence of events can be completed within five seconds.
When Royal Arctic Line sends a shipping schedule in XML format to a customer’s postbox, and the customer has selected FTP communications, the XML document is deleted automatically after the customer downloads it. It is then marked as ‘read’ in the customer’s postbox. This eliminates any cleanup measures, and the IBS solution keeps track of which documents are read, or unread, and when.
Implementation
Royal Arctic Line and IBS staff co-operated in developing the solution, providing a combination of core knowledge and development skills. The implementation included input from Royal Arctic Line and their external customers. This structure established how users carried out business processes and identified issues they wanted to address with the IBS solution. The initial implementation affected nearly 70 users at diverse Royal Arctic Line customer sites. No training was required, since they use their present, native software. Only minor training was required for customers’ ISVs and for the Royal Arctic Line IT administrator, who handles HTTP administration.
Key to implementation was getting Royal Arctic Line’s customers to understand and accept the business approach, based on case histories, which was used in the implementation. This goal was accomplished successfully, reflecting an implementation that was on time and within budget. Royal Arctic Line can carry out ongoing implementations for new customers, but the firm has opted to let IBS handle the job. IBS also supports the ISVs for Royal Arctic Line customers.
Back-office transparency
Royal Arctic Line’s customers can create shipment bookings directly through their sales orders – without added overhead. The order/booking process is streamlined, saving time and costs. Royal Arctic Line and its customers also benefit from not having to maintain and use an Extranet for handling sales orders, which was previously the case. Royal Arctic Line’s customers use the solution without noticing any change in how they work on their own systems. This absolute back-office transparency means that no downtime or training-related costs are incurred by Royal Arctic Line’s customers. They do not need to know how or where to create bookings in Royal Arctic Line’s system: the IBS Enterprise Application Integration solution handles it for them.
With XML as the standard information format, all information throughout the system can be accessed and read by all connected parties. This open communication contributes to better order/booking accuracy and fewer problems with invoices, route schedules and other documents. Simply put, it means better service – a decisive advantage in the shipping industry.
Finally, the solution helps Royal Arctic Line and its customers save more than time and costs. It also allows for better planning and shipping, which translate into more efficient business and shipping – and perhaps to saving Greenland and the planet. |
