Manufacturer cleans up with outsourced B2B trading
1 min read
Global cleaning equipment manufacturer Karcher says it is saving the time and expense of building and maintaining e-commerce systems in-house by outsourcing the entire function to Seeburger Managed Services
Seeburger’s hosted service is handling all B2B and EDI transactions for Karcher’s US-based retail customers as well as all transactions that pass through UPS Supply Chain Management, Karcher’s logistics provider.
“Our parent company in Germany and several other European offices use the Seeburger B2B Gateway for their B2B/EDI operations, but our business model in the US is better suited to a hosted service because our staff here is relatively small,” says Oliver Schmid, IS manager at Karcher USA in Duluth, Georgia. “It is more cost-efficient for us to outsource this service rather than investing in an internal infrastructure, including a developer and technician, even over the long run.”
Karcher is using Seeburger’s B2B Gateway integration suite tightly integrated with Karcher’s SAP R/3 ERP system which automatically populates all transaction information into SAP in real time. The gateway is processing thousands of purchase orders, shipping notes and other transactions with customers like Wal-Mart, Costco, Lowe’s, Menards, Sears and the Army & Air Force Exchange Service.
Seeburger is also handling Karcher’s e-business integration and operations support. Before deployment, that included message mapping, workflow development and system testing with each of the company’s trading partner, as well as integration and testing with UPS’ systems. Since deployment, work has shifted to 24x7 system monitoring, error handling and message maintenance for changing partners requirements.
Karcher says there were no upfront costs for the software, hardware or training: it just pays a fixed monthly fee.
