Project scope:
- Implementation of new EDI solution within a very tight timeframe
- Improvement of EDI data visibility, plus overall solution reliability and scalability
Outcome:
- Fast migration to ecosio’s Integration Hub
- Vastly improved data visibility and accessibility via the ecosio.monitor
- Substantial relief for internal teams thanks to 24/7 end-to-end monitoring and proactive partner onboarding
- Lower overall costs
About Feralpi
Having grown out of a family business based in Northern Italy, Feralpi was officially founded by Carlo Pasini in Lonardo, Brescia, in 1968. Since then, Feralpi has grown from a small Italian business to one of Europe’s leading steel manufacturers, and today employs over 1,900 people across Europe and North Africa.
In addition to leading the way in steel production, Feralpi has also long been a step ahead when it comes to transparency and sustainability, publishing its first sustainability report back in 2004.
In part, it was this same forward-thinking mindset that prompted Feralpi to approach ecosio…
A necessary change
At the end of 2023, Feralpi’s IT team was informed that their existing SaaS EDI solution would shortly be discontinued. This left the Feralpi team in the unenviable position of having to select and integrate a new B2B automation system and processes in a matter of months in order to avoid serious issues including loss of business and damaged partner relationships.
While the timeline for migration was tight, it wasn’t all bad news, however, as the project also offered Feralpi the chance to eliminate several issues that had been eroding the efficiency of the company’s B2B communication.
Specifically, Feralpi had been experiencing a growing number of performance issues as well as rising costs as a result of their SaaS EDI solution. As Feralpi’s CISO & Senior System Analyst Glauco Benini explains, “While our existing EDI solution was easy to set up initially, it lacked advanced features such as data visibility. When combined with the solution’s poor customer support, this made finding and correcting errors difficult and time consuming. Connectivity issues and slow processing times were also common. Sometimes we would have a truck loaded and ready to leave, but we weren’t able to make the delivery as the order hadn’t been logged.”
Feralpi’s priorities for the new EDI solution:
- Reliability
- Scalability
- Good customer support
- Data transparency
- Minimal internal effort
Selecting a solution
While Glauco and his team were keen to improve EDI performance and usability, it was important to them that the chosen solution shouldn’t require substantial internal effort. “As my team and I don’t have the time to focus on EDI exclusively, we were looking for an externally managed solution where most EDI tasks would be taken care of for us”, explains Glauco. “Though we considered other approaches, ultimately ecosio’s fully managed approach was the only one able to satisfy all of our needs while simultaneously reducing internal work and maintenance costs.”
With such a small window in which to find a new EDI solution, Feralpi also placed high value on the availability and expertise of support personnel. As Glauco notes, “Ultimately you can have the best solution on the market but if you don’t have the right people using it too, it’s pointless. Not only are ecosio’s team very knowledgeable, they’re also very international, which is extremely useful when technical discussions are needed in different languages.”
The importance of scalability
Another major factor behind Feralpi’s choice to migrate to ecosio was the scalability and flexibility ecosio’s cloud-based solution offers.
As Glauco expands, “Whenever we wanted to make changes in our old system there was always a long delivery time, which directly impacted business operations. As our customer base is growing, we needed a solution that could expand to match our demands for more automation moving forward. In the next few years we expect to be exchanging more documents with partners, plus we also anticipate the need for more sophisticated demand planning and the recording of environmental data. With ecosio we’re confident our EDI solution can evolve alongside our other processes and priorities.”
The project
Once ecosio had been selected, the migration of three partners began in February 2024.
Although only three document types were involved (ORDERS, ORDRSP and DESADV), the onboarding had several technical hurdles. As ecosio Integration Engineer Fedele Zuccaro explains, “Because all three partners had different formats, and one even had their own custom XML format, there was a lot of complex mapping required”. Further, as Feralpi’s ERP customiser was unable to connect to SFTP servers, it was necessary to use ecosio’s EPO connector to enable Feralpi to exchange EDI messages with one of their partners via their existing SAP system.
Despite these integration challenges, however, the project was finished in a matter of weeks, with two partner connections being put live on 1 April 2024 and the other just two weeks later.
A successful collaboration
Commenting on the outcome of the project, Glauco notes “The process was very easy and very fast for us. The team at ecosio are competent, helpful and proactive in resolving issues whenever they arise.”
Since being connected to ecosio’s powerful Integration Hub, EDI efficiency at Feralpi has also improved dramatically. As Glauco explains, “The ecosio.monitor, in particular, has made a huge difference to our day-to-day operations. Being able to find and download files easily has made resolving issues so much simpler. At the start of the collaboration our expectations were high, and we’re very happy to say that they were met!”
SUCCESS STORIES
Some of our other projects
ecosio offers fully managed EDI across all industries. Read more success stories of our EDI solutions here.
