EDI Customer Case Study - Accent Home Products

Accent Home Products, a premier supplier of home furniture to the North American retail marketplace had to find a solution to integrate its existing FACTS Accounting System and SoftCare’s TradeLink EDI Management System to send and receive EDI documents via the Internet using the AS2 protocol to satisfy a mandate by Wal-Mart. In addition, Accent required a way to reduce communications problems using their existing EDI VAN connection.

Accent Home Products designs and manufacturers home furnishings for the North American retail marketplace. In 1995, they were looking for ways to comply with retailer’s demands for Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) communications of business documents. They wanted an EDI application that could integrate to their existing FACTS Accounting system and reduce their internal business processing costs. This is why they turned to SoftCare.

Accent Home Products chose SoftCare and its TradeLink EDI Management System because they liked their approach to combining, software, consulting and services to provide an all-encompassing solution to implementing EDI for them. In addition, SoftCare had worked with their existing integrator to integrate TradeLink with their FACTS Accounting Software to fully integrate EDI Order Cycle documents. The system that was designed and implemented resulted in a fully integrated EDI business management solution, which handles 90% of their orders received from retailers and significantly reduces processing costs. Bob Christensen, Director of IT at Accent says, “TradeLink’s ability to quickly and easily meet the demands of our retail clients, plus SoftCare’s attention to detail and expertise in EDI implementations made them the ideal partner to implement an EDI System for Accent Home Products”.

Implementing an integrated solution for communications via the Internet

Originally, Accent communicated to their EDI enabled trading partners using a bi-synchronous connection to an EDI Value Added Network (VAN) and directly to Wal-Mart using 3780Plus® and SYNCcable+™ from Cleo Communications. While Accent was very happy with their EDI solution overall, they were growing increasingly concerned about the reliability of their EDI VAN connection. Problems with bi-synchronous communications using public telephone lines and antiquated communication protocols were causing issues of lost or delayed Purchase Orders, which affected their bottom line. In addition, in early 2003, Accent received notification from Wal-Mart that they were dropping support for bi-synchronous communications in favor of communications via AS2. Accent went to SoftCare to find a solution to their communications dilemma. SoftCare proposed an upgrade to their existing TradeLink EDI Management software to its tightly integrated TradeLink solution which supported direct AS2 EDI communications to Wal-Mart and to their EDI VAN using Cleo LexiCom™.

The first step was to upgrade their existing TradeLink, which was resident on its SCO UNIX machine. Communications between TradeLink and LexiCom are handled using web services. SoftCare developed a series of Remote API’s to communicate with LexiCom. As an example, on outbound communications, business documents are moved from FACTS to TradeLink via the FACTS/TradeLink EDI Interface. Once received, TradeLink generates EDI complaint Mailbags. Using its communication process, TradeLink sends EDI Mailbags (through Whitney’s Firewall) to LexiCom. LexiCom sends the EDI Mailbags to the appropriate trading partner. Upon receipt of the Message Delivery Notification from the trading partner, LexiCom updates TradeLink of the status of the communication session. TradeLink’s communications process then updates its internal audit system with the results of the communications session.

Implementing direct AS2 communications to Wal-Mart

Once all the pieces to the solution were installed, the SoftCare Solutions group concentrated on quickly implementing a direct AS2connection to Wal-Mart client. Using the pre-configured host defined in LexiCom for Wal-Mart, it was a simple process for the Solutions group to quickly and efficiently implement Wal-Mart and get Accent trading EDI documents via the Internet to Wal-Mart.

Implementing an AS2 connection to Accent Home Products’ EDI VAN

Once their direct connection to Wal-Mart was implemented, the next step was to try to improve communications with their EDI VAN for retail clients who hadn’t implemented direct connections. SoftCare worked with Accent and their EDI VAN to re-configure their EDI communications to use AS2 to the EDI VAN. In addition, SoftCare re-negotiated with Accent’s EDI VAN with a result of Accent realizing a significant reduction in their EDI VAN charges. As an added bonus, the implementation of AS2 communications to their EDI VAN has significantly reduced communications failures to the EDI VAN. Bob Christensen, Director of IT of Accent Home Products says “the implementation of a tightly integrated EDI solution that leverages the Internet to communicate business documents has resulted in direct positive benefits to our bottom line”.

Cleo and 3780Plus are registered trademarks and LexiCom and SYNCcable+ are trademarks of Cleo Communications. SoftCare is an authorized reseller of Cleo LexiCom.

For more information about SoftCare, TradeLink EDI Management System,
and the SoftCare Solutions Group please contact us at: