Inovis Case Study: Great Plains Coca Cola® Bottling Company

The Great Plains Business

Case Study

SNAPSHOT: The Great Plains BusinessGreat Plains Coca-Cola® Bottling Company is the seventh largest independent bottler of Coca-Cola in the United States. Located in Oklahoma City, Great Plains has 1,400 employees and services more than two million people across Oklahoma and Arkansas.

Since 1922, the Browne family has owned and

SNAPSHOT:

Challenge: • How to continuously

translate EDI and XML documents and purge transactions without taking the system down?

M ti ti d i “W ’ d

“The Visual Mapper is really amazing and it is quite efficient! We have not found anything else in the country that could handle (the complexity of our XML documents)!”Ron Martinez – Programmer / Analyst

Great Plains Coca-Cola Bottling Company

, yrun Great Plains using a simple operating philosophy: “Continuous Customer Service.”

With a goal to deliver the best quality drinks with the best customer service, Great Plains relies on having a consistent and reliable production process.

Solution: • TrustedLink for i• TrustedLink Extended

Translation Module• TrustedLink Scripted FTP

Module

Benefits:U d d

Martinez continued saying, “We’ve used TrustedLink for i since the Premenos days back in1995 and because of the relationship we have with customer support, the structure and usability of the software and all the enhancements, we are happy with TLi as our translator.”

TLi accommodates multiple document As a result of their execution and desire for excellence, Great Plains has become a leader within the Coca-Cola system, with bottlers from around the world visiting their site to see how they operate.

The ChallengeWith more than 600 different beverages ranging from Coca Cola to Vitaminwater to Full

• Uninterrupted production processes using non-dedicated purge features.

• One mapper solution for all data formats.

• Efficient performance and use of IT resources.

TLi accommodates multiple document types, provides efficient communication methods and file maintenance strategies.

Great Plains uses the TrustedLink Extended Translation Module to translate XML documents sent to and received from their warehouse. They created two “…monster” translation formats with tons of conditions that

from Coca-Cola to Vitaminwater to Full Throttle and a variety of other products, Great Plains needed a way to manage their inventory and process orders timely and efficiently.

After purchasing TrustedLink for i to send and receive EDI transactions with a regional grocery chain and other national chains, Great Plains discovered they had a great need for

are tied to 20 physical files.

Great Plains also uses the TrustedLink Scripted FTP Module to transmit data every two minutes. This data includes routing information, inventory, POS, receivables; shipping times, etc. They created a Scripted FTP Module for the WMS and 15 others for various companies.

y gtransmitting XML data to and from their Warehouse Management System (WMS) to manage their daily needs.

The SolutionEven though Great Plains has free EDI services available to them, they chose to rely on the TLi translator because of their proven history with

Approximately 75% of their transactions through TLi are EDI related and 25% are internal XML transactions to and from their warehouse.

Great Plains’ system is constantly running and they have become very efficient through the years by automating various functions including

Inovis. “TLi is very robust works well on the AS/400 or i5,” said Ron Martinez, Programmer/Analyst and EDI Coordinator for Great Plains Coca-Cola.

years by automating various functions including communications and file maintenance. The flexibility in the Visual Mapper accommodates their complex XML documents and use of the Scripted FTP Module allows for quick and effective communications.

The latest release, TrustedLink for i 6.3, “…was heaven sent to me!” Ron explained. Prior to TLi 6.3, Great Plains would have to take the system down 3-4 hours a week to run a purge because the procedure required a dedicated system. As “promised”, Great Plains now runs the purge automatically every Saturday without interrupting

TrustedLink for i 6.3, “…was heaven sent to me! We can do a purge without taking down the system and it is fantastic! I needed a solution and you (Inovis) came up with one ”

Ron Martinez is a Programmer/Analyst for Great Plains Coca-Cola Bottling Company. Since his start with Great Plains almost 22 years ago, Ron has managed all EDI functions, including installing TLi in 1995. He has also worked on general programming every Saturday without interrupting

production and they perform a files reorganization once every period.

The ResultsEven though they have been approached by other translation software package vendors, Great Plains Coca-Cola believes TLi is the best translation software for their business

one. Ron Martinez –Programmer/AnalystGreat Plains Coca-Cola Bottling Company

has also worked on general programming projects and maintains the Lawson ERP System which includes (BSI) Taxes. Ron continues to be a valuable member of the Great Plains team working to provide the best quality service for their customers.

About Inovis Inovis provides software and services that

bl i t d b i needs. “Inovis offers great service and is always willing to help,” says Martinez, who also noted there has never been a time where he has encountered a situation that he felt he would need to “…bump it up” to the next level for help. One of their network administrators, who was not EDI savvy and whose job it was to get the WMS working, did h d d itt d “ th t th

“If you are running on a System i and need a system translator, this (TrustedLink for i) is the one!”Ron Martinez –

Programmer/Analyst

enable companies to do business electronically across their entire trading community. Each day, more than 20,000 companies across the globe rely on the Inovis platform to reliably send and receive purchase orders, exchange files and manage exceptions in order to lower supply chain costs and get products to customers faster. Founded in 1983, the company is based in Atlanta Georgia and has offices across the did research and admitted “…that there

wasn’t any better software out there and that they (Inovis) really knows what they are doing.”

og a e / a ystGreat Plains Coca-Cola Bottling Company

Atlanta, Georgia and has offices across the United States, the United Kingdom and Hong Kong. For more information, please visit www.inovis.com or email info@inovis.com.

Inovis is a proud partner of IBM.

About Inovis

The IBM logo and the Business Partner emblem are trademarks of international Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. The letters "IBM" are also a registered trademark and are often used to identify the corporation and its offerings. Great Plains Coca-Cola Bottling Company. All Rights Reserved. "Coca-Cola" is a registered trademark of The Coca-Cola Company. Used with permission.

About InovisInovis, a GXS Company, provides business-to-business e-commerce software and services that manage tradingpartner transactions. In 2010, Inovis and GXS combined to form the largest B2B service provider in the world,supporting more than 40,000 companies and 70% of the Fortune 500 in exchanging purchase orders, invoicesand other transactions. For more information, please visit www.gxs.com/inovis.