Success story
Travis Perkins plcIndustry• Builders Merchant and Home ImprovementSolution• OpenText™ Trading Grid™

Travis Perkins builds
successful supply chaincommunication with OpenText
OpenText™ Trading Grid™ provides secure, stable, reliable
and efficient EDI messaging

Results
Elimination of paper documents
in supply chain reduces cost andimproves efficiency
OpenText provides quick, accurate
trading partner configuration,easing workload
Outstanding and responsive
support from OpenText“We can rely on OpenText Trading Grid to play its role inensuring we meet our customers’ SLAs. The same is true
for our suppliers. Where we have SLAs with them, OpenText
always performs. It’s incredibly reliable. It just works.”
Kunji Bodhani

eTrading team leader
Travis Perkins plc

Travis Perkins builds successful supply chain communication with OpenText

Travis Perkins plc has been supplying the building and construction
trades throughout the UK for more than 200 years. Today, thegroup consists of more than 20 well-known businesses, including
Wickes, BSS, Toolstation, Keyline and Tile Giant, with more than
2,000 branches. In total, the group employs about 28,000 staff andturnover in 2016 was £6,217 million.
From its headquarters in Northampton, England, Travis Perkins manages
a complex supply chain that involves many hundreds of suppliers andthousands of customers. For more than 20 years, the group has relied on
OpenText Trading Grid to handle the electronic receipt and transmissionof messages between them and their trading partners.
Kunji Bodhani, eTrading team leader at Travis Perkins plc, explained in
more detail: “Like all businesses, we used to rely heavily on paper
for the placing and receiving of purchase orders, order acknowledgements, delivery documents, invoices and credit notes. As Electronic Data Interchange or EDI began to gain traction, we adopted
OpenText to help us reduce costs, improve efficiency and provide atransparent audit trail.”With some customers and suppliers mandating EDI, Travis Perkins has toknow that it can place its trust in OpenText to manage the complexities
and variety of messages and their specific structure.
“Whenever we need to implement a new trading partner, we simply
provide the pertinent details to OpenText, using a standard form.
The OpenText team then takes care of the configurations for us andsends us an acknowledgement once complete and ready for use. It isall very straightforward and quick too, we never have to chase for a
status update and we deal with the same point of contact throughout
the process,” said Bodhani.

Outstanding support

Travis Perkins use multiple mailboxes for the transmission and receipt ofmessages and should a query arise, a support call is logged with OpenText.
“It is rare that we have any issues, but, if for example, we need areport on a specific mailbox issue, the team at OpenText is always
quick to respond. They are knowledgeable and always provide great
service,” said Bodhani.
Travis Perkins originally selected OpenText partly due to its largepresence in the building supply sector and the extensive knowledgeof message setups. This has continued over the past two decades,
continually reaffirming the selection of OpenText Trading Grid.

Centralization provides efficiency

Across the group, each business manages its own purchasing, which
can originate at a branch level. Purchase orders are then centrally
managed at the headquarters in the back-office systems, generating
the necessary output for OpenText to transmit.
“We typically batch our orders to suppliers, with many orders in asingle transmission. This means we have a single generation number,making it much easier to track. Similarly, we batch invoices from suppliers too, again making tracking simpler,” said Bodhani. “Batches arereceived throughout the day and then processed in the evening, with
automated connections between OpenText and our other systems.”
Travis Perkins also uses OpenText to send delivery documents, orderacknowledgements, invoices and credit notes, etc. to customers thatuse EDI, ensuring they are able to trade with the widest range of customers possible.

“Support is outstanding,set-up is simple andthe solution is stable.
It is very muchbusiness as usual.”
Kunji Bodhani

eTrading team leader
Travis Perkins plc

Travis Perkins builds successful supply chain communication with OpenText

With all messages managed centrally, should any errors occur the skills
and knowledge are on hand to take immediate action.
“The number of errors is very low with OpenText and are usuallycaused by something other than the solution. Should an error occur
though, we are notified and can quickly take corrective action,”
said Bodhani. “Also, we haven’t really experienced any unexpected
downtime with OpenText. We are always notified well in advance ofany planned maintenance that will affect us.”

Ability to meet service level agreements

Many of Travis Perkins customers work to service level agreements(SLA). For example, one of its largest customers requires that any ordersplaced be processed by the following day.

“We can rely on OpenText Trading Grid to play its role in ensuring wemeet our customers’ SLAs. The same is true for our suppliers. Where
we have SLAs with them, OpenText always performs. It is incrediblyreliable. It just works,” said Bodhani.
With the minimum of effort on the part of Travis Perkins, OpenText
Trading Grid ensures that the company is able to trade, exchanging
messages in standard formats, making life easy. Over time, the admin
overhead has remained low, saving money.
“Support is outstanding, set-up is simple, and the solution is stable,”said Bodhani. “It is very much business as usual.”

About OpenText

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visit opentext.com.
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