Success story
Benders Sverige AB
Industry• Manufacturing

Solution• OpenText™ Communications
Center EnterprisePartner support• Swedwise

Results
Improved agility throughreduced document change
times
Lowered costs with no needto involve IT for documentchanges/composition
Improved customer andsupplier relationships with
document personalization

Benders builds better
communications with OpenText

OpenText™ Communications Center Enterprise delivers agile,
personalized and cost-effective document output“The ease with which we can produce documents andpersonalize them helps us stand out from our competitors.
In today’s increasingly digital workplace, where personal
contact with customers and suppliers is decreasing,
OpenText Communications Center Enterprise provides ameans for us to maintain a personal edge and closeness.”
Mathias Olsson

Operations ManagerBenders Sverige

Benders builds better communications with OpenText

Founded in 1960 by Karl-Erik Bender, and still family owned today,
Benders Sverige AB is one of the leading manufacturers of roofing,landscaping, natural stone, insulation, walling and infrastructure
products in the Nordic countries. Headquartered in Edsvära, justoutside Kvänum in the Västergötland region of Sweden, the firm
has multiple production facilities throughout Europe and about 30
warehouses, sales locations and distributors. Benders produces
12,000m2 of paving each day, uses 130 million kg of cement each year,
and makes enough roof tiles to cover 250 detached homes every day.
The construction sector is changing, from the basic ways of working
from the past to the digital era. This is eroding the traditional modelof close, personal contact with the customer. Increasingly, customers
place orders using tools such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), via
web portals or email, rather than over the phone, face to face or by fax.
The electronic exchange of documents such as invoices, quotations andpurchase orders has resulted in fewer opportunities to inform customersof new products, influence the products they buy, special offers or toinclude personal messages.
As part of the implementation of a new ERP platform, M3 ERP platformby Infor®, Benders decided to include the improvement of documentcomposition and output as one of its strategic goals.
Mathias Olsson, Operations Manager at Benders Sverige expands,“When we initially implemented M3, we effectively just lifted ourdocument templates from the previous system. This meant thatwhenever we needed to implement a new document template, or evenmodify an existing one, the line of business concerned had to involve
the IT department. This took time, sometimes many weeks, was prone
to errors and affected our ability to make changes quickly.”

Selecting an enterprise class solution – Communications
Center Enterprise
Benders turned to OpenText partner Swedwise who had been involvedin the otherwise highly successful implementation of M3.

“While we did look at a number of suppliers, we were so impressedwith the knowledge and professionalism of Swedwise, that when
they recommended we look at OpenText Communications CenterEnterprise (CCE), formerly StreamServe, we decided that it was theright solution for our needs,” says Olsson.
M3 ERP platform by Infor uses CCE for certain document output needs.
However, for the extended, interactive needs of Benders, a project toimplement the full capabilities of CCE was launched.
“Using Scrum agile development methodology, we quickly implemented the core framework of CCE and rapidly went live with our first
document type, purchase orders. Working closely with Swedwise, theimplementation of OpenText was entirely out of the box, i.e. no custom
code development was required, hugely aiding the ability to quickly
deploy the solution,” says Olsson.
During the two-month period of the initial deployment, Benders also
made a strategic acquisition of another business. It quickly adopted
the necessary changes to the purchase order process into the solution,highlighting the agile and flexible nature of CCE.

Personalization and professional document
presentation impresses

With numerous user roles now using the solution, including Channel
Managers, Logistics, Purchasing and Sales, feedback has beenvery positive.

“In the past, even a small
document change took
an average of 8.3 days.
Users can now implement
such changes typically inunder 30-minutes.”
Mathias Olsson

Operations Manager
Benders Sverige

Benders builds better communications with OpenText“Our account managers have received numerous compliments on theprofessional look and feel of documents, regardless of the form they
are delivered in,” says Olsson.
A wide and growing range of business documents are now produced
by CCE including purchase orders, quotations, invoices, delivery notes,
order acknowledgements and picking lists. Depending on the customer’s
preference of document type, it is straightforward for users to select toattach documents, such as PDFs, to an email or to have the document
printed or prepared for other electronic delivery mechanisms, making
the solution truly multichannel.
“The ease with which we can produce documents and personalize
them helps us stand out from our competitors. In today’s increasingly digital workplace, where personal contact with customers andsuppliers is decreasing, OpenText CCE provides a means for us tomaintain a personal edge and closeness,” says Olsson.
Benders personalizes its quotations, for example, with details of thecustomer’s account manager, including a photograph. The easy
document composition capabilities of CCE allows additional products
related to the quotation to be included too. Documents are quickly
composed, customized and can be previewed by users, with no needto involve anyone else in the process. This speeds the time to deliver
documents and reduces costs.

Business benefits of cost reduction and agility coupledwith motivated users

With faster composition and delivery of documents, without the need toinvolve IT or a third party, Benders has not just reduced its costs.

“Feedback from our staff has been hugely positive. They feel much
more involved and engaged, they can self-serve to meet their
document needs, which in turn motivates them. This too has apositive impact on cost, efficiency and staff morale,” says Olsson.
Benders can now seamlessly add information relevant to a customer
quotation or a purchase order to a supplier, such as contact information,branch location and opening times.
The reduction in time to make even the simplest of changes has
resulted in a much shorter lead time for new or amended documents tobe available to users.
“Recently, we had to implement a change of head office phone
numbers, including all individual direct-dial numbers. In the past,even a small document change like this took an average of 8.3
days. Users can now implement such changes typically in under 30
minutes,” says Olsson.

Opportunities for future applications

With many core business documents now implemented and live using
CCE, thoughts have turned to other potential applications. For example,
Benders wants to implement a self-service portal for customers toaccess documents such as quotations, invoices, delivery notes andorder acknowledgements. In addition, safety sheets for specialist glues
and chemicals will automatically be printed with delivery notes, ensuring
compliance with the latest regulations.

Benders builds better communications with OpenText“OpenText Communications Center Enterprise has proved to be very
easy to use, just one day of training and users are productive,” says
Olsson. “The interface is intuitive and easy to use, and we are looking
at implementing many other document types to further streamline
and improve efficiency in our process.”

About Swedwise

Swedwise is an independent consultancy and solutions provider headquartered in Karlstad, Sweden. Operating in the Customer Communications and Enterprise Information Management space, Swedwise isspecialized in helping both commercial and public organizations in theautomation and digitization of information-intensive processes.

www.swedwise.com

About OpenText

OpenText, The Information Company,
enables organizations to gain insightthrough market leading information
management solutions, on-premises orin the cloud. For more information about
OpenText (NASDAQ: OTEX, TSX: OTEX)
visit opentext.com.
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