Eating up Sterling Integrator Migration at Oberto
A GIS/Sterling Integrator Success Story
THE COMPANY:
Founded in Seattle in 1918,
the Oberto Sausage Company is one of the nation’s top beef
jerky producers and snack food brands. For more than
90 years, three generations of the Oberto family have been
making fine quality meat snacks which are now available
online and in convenience, grocery and mass market
retailers nationwide.
THE CHALLENGE :
When the Oberto Sausage Company
launched a nationwide campaign to accelerate growth and
solidify its position as an industry brand leader, B2B systems
were put on high alert. The company processes 90% of all
sales order transactions via EDI, explained
Programmer/Analyst Sean Vasquez. “Without EDI,
we wouldn’t be able to compete in the market.
It’s vital to our success,” said Vasquez. So, with the
prospect of on-boarding several hundred new
trading partners, Oberto developed a long term
strategy to move to Sterling Integrator
for B2B communications and translation. Both
communications and translation needed to be upgraded
urgently. “We were running Gentran Server for UNIX,
and our older AS2 version of Gentran Integration Suite was
out of support,” said Vasquez. Bisync communications also needed
to be upgraded to AS2. A comprehensive Sterling Integrator upgrade was planned,
but time constraints and project costs posed major obstacles and
subsequently had delayed the project.
THE SOLUTION:
On Oxford Consulting Group’s recommendation, Oberto included the implementation
of B2B FrameworkTM for Sterling Integrator in their upgrade project, using it to dramatically reduce business process development and streamline the set-up and management of trading partners. Now implemented, B2B Framework also allows for the efficient management of all B2B documents. At the time of implementation, with 46 trading partners, Oberto was sending and receiving 15 different document types spanning multiple EDI versions from 4010 to 5010 UCS, amounting to over 1,700 documents monthly. With the inclusion of B2B Framework, Oberto was able to relaunch their migration effort with a much smaller budget and time frame.
THE PROCESS:
The Oxford team worked on-site
with Oberto for a week to configure Sterling Integrator and
install B2B Framework. During that time, they
easily created Oberto-specific Framework rules,
identities, code lists etc. via a Microsoft Excel
import. By week’s end, Oberto was running Sterling Integrator
in parallel with B2B Framework. “Oxford gave
me documentation and instructions tailored to
our installation, which has been very helpful,”
said Vasquez. Then, after two weeks of
carbon-copying to test the new AS2 mailslot,
all production communications were switched
over to the Framework-supported Sterling Integrator system. It took only two days to convert 84 maps for Oberto’s existing trading partners from Gentran Server for UNIX to Sterling Integrator. New trading partners are on-boarded directly into the new Sterling Integrator system.
THE RESULTS:
“We had a 50%
savings in implementation costs
thanks to B2B Framework,”
said Vasquez. “In today’s economic
environment, we needed to keep costs
to a minimum and Oxford Consulting helped us
achieve that goal.” Document management
and on-boarding trading partners is now faster and easier added Vasquez.
“B2B Framework allows us to have complete visibility at every step a document goes through in our EDI process. I have no idea how I’d accomplish that using Sterling Integrator without B2B Framework.”
Oberto first worked with the Oxford team in 2002. Today Vasquez says, “They [Oxford Consulting] are about creating long term partnerships with organizations to help them achieve their goals. I trust Oxford Consulting’s opinion and know I can count on them to give me a fair price and great service.”
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