Company - Building Supplies and Construction Industry Case Studies

The focus is now on achieving business improvement using established IT infrastructures to achieve internal and external interoperability - the benefits of an interconnected world.

Businesses today want B2B integration to ensure the best return on investment, for past, present and future industry initiatives.

The building and construction industry relies on the successful interaction between builder's merchants, contractors and other trading partners. This emphasises the increasing need to integrate systems within a company's enterprise, with trading partners and suppliers at varying levels of technical capability.

SAA understands the particular needs of the building and construction industry and provides the solutions to reduce costs, increase operational efficiency and streamline business processes.

Wolseley

Wolseley are the UK's leading plumbing and building merchant serving companies and professionals in the construction industry. Wolseley have recognised for many years that it would bring significant savings if they were able to automate the exchange of business transactions with their complete supplier community and with corporate customers. Unable to achieve such levels of integration with traditional EDI, Wolseley required an approach that could be rapidly rolled out to the community with minimum cost and infrastructure requirements and would be capable of future extension.

Wolseley branded the project 'CENTERLINK' and, by choosing REIMS, set out to standardise the business cycle communications. To minimise costs throughout the supply chain it was identified that an infrastructure based upon Internet technologies would be the most effective approach. By using XML as the standard for data exchange, with its inherent support for application integration, and the Internet, Wolseley have been able to ensure partner participation in the project from small, medium and large organisations.

Wolseley chose the REIMSnet eXchange Format (RXF) as their standardised set of XML documents, as it was readily available and met their business requirements. This format has been developed by SAA Consultants to assist organisations in rapidly implementing XML as part of their B2B environment.

Travis Perkins

Travis Perkins are one of the largest suppliers to the UK's building and construction industry with a national network of more than 600 branches. When they decided to update their IT infrastructure and move away from traditional EDI, Travis Perkins had to consider the many EDI standards that the Builders Merchants Federation implements. They were also keen to improve efficiency throughout their supplier base by using the latest Internet protocols and technologies, such as XML.

Travis Perkins took the decision to update their VAN-based EDI system with SAA's REIMS for Windows. In doing this, Travis Perkins not only took advantage of a community management infrastructure but also protected their original investment in EDI.

Enhanced communications with trading partners, as a result of the REIMS implementation, has led to a reduction in costs and an overall improvement in efficiency at Travis Perkins.

Tarmac
Tarmac, the UK market leader of building materials, wanted to comply with major hub integration requirements and enhance customer satisfaction objectives. They set about upgrading their existing business interoperability capability to a combined EDI and XML infrastructure, to provide them with greater visibility and control over their business integration activity.

Based upon Tarmac's requirements, SAA proposed REIMS to allow integration with SAP applications and to enable them to communicate with their trading partners. REIMS includes full EDI capability in addition to significant functionality for the processing of XML-based exchanges. Tarmac also selected the REIMSnet eXchange Format (RXF) as their standardised set of XML documents.

REIMS has enabled Tarmac to maintain continuity with their existing EDI trading partners, such as Wolseley and Travis Perkins, as well as meeting new and emerging requirements for B2B integration, for both today and in the future.

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