Successful EDI implementation at Tradycja i Jakość

Polish tradition and forward-thinking mindset

The introduction of EDI Tradycja i Jakość sp. z o.o. shows that small retailers are increasingly interested in the benefits of EDI. The system was deployed three years ago with the assistance of EDITEL PL.

Traditional yet modern

Tradycja i Jakość Sp. z o. o. (T&J) is a Polish retailer with an interesting history. It was founded in Wrocław in 1989 under the name of Społem Powszechna Spółdzielnia Spożywców Północ. Following a restructuring in 2015, it currently has a sales network with 13 retail outlets. One of the most prestigious outlets is T&J Deli­catessen in Pasaż Grunwaldzki (Shopping Arcade). T&J is a company that is deeply rooted in the Polish trading tradition while having a forward-looking and for­ward-thinking mindset. In 2019, the company started working with EDITEL PL and since then has consistently been implementing EDI communication as its first choice for exchanging business documents with its suppliers.

EDI service implementation

While it took merely a week to im­plement EDI and launch the SAFE invoice archiving system, T&J spent about four months preparing for the project. The EDI technology was im­plemented in stages. The first step was the automated processing of e-mail attachments. These were an addition to hard copies, and the goal was to incorporate documents into the IT system. At the same time, sup­port for documents delivered by the operator, i.e. EDITEL, was laun­ched. EDITEL trained the staff, re­viewed XML files previously created by T&J, created the connection, and carried out a pilot project with five selected suppliers. The ultimate goal was to eliminate all potential prob­lems in the flow of communication.

Phasing out paper documents

After the pilot phase was completed, T&J went through a list of companies that had previously expressed their willingness to exchange documents in EDI format and these suppliers were then connected to the system. In 2019, another rollout was implemented spe­cifically for companies that did not use EDI. The project included e-in­voices, orders, automatic matching and validation of invoices and correc­tive invoices with delivery notes and returns as well as APERAK message exchange, which is the EDI confirma­tion for invoice delivery. Since EDITEL had introduced an electronic communication channel with most vendors, paper documents gradually became obsolete.

Benefits

The main benefit of EDI is that it eliminates most of the manual work required for document processing. Even though Tradycja i Jakość operates on a much smaller scale than larger retailers, the automation of more than 100,000 documents greatly reduces the time and effort required for processing. While the manual process used to take roughly a week, this is now done in a matter of minutes. Also, thanks to EDI, the paper archive is now much smaller and lost invoices are a thing of the past, which speeds up the entire process. Additionally, and very import­antly, errors have been largely eliminated. Another benefit is that T&J has become more attractive for large suppliers. With the support of EDI messa­ges, retail chains can negotiate better purchase prices, which makes life easier for suppliers.