Ad-hoc analytics within EDI

The company: Manor

Switzerland’s largest department store group welcomes its customers at the country’s most attractive locations, thereby contributing to the vitality of Swiss cities. At the same time, the company pursues an omnichannel strategy (utilizing and integrating physical stores, its online shop, and services) and also operates an online marketplace on manor.ch for selected manufacturers and brand partners. The company has a presence throughout the country, employs around 6,800 people, and trains over 200 apprentices. The Manor Group comprises 56 Manor department stores, 22 Manor Food supermarkets, and 23 Manora restaurants.

Source: Manor | Informationen und Hintergründe zum Unternehmen

The project: Ad-hoc Analytics in the EDI area

As part of an ERP implementation, the entire Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) architecture was revised. In this context, many data exchange definitions were updated and their content adapted. The new ERP processes affected the messages exchanged in terms of content, transmission time and processing logic.

The challenges: Unstable flows of goods and information

The changes to the processes in the new ERP meant that the exchange of data with suppliers and partners was severely affected and the flow of goods and information could no longer be guaranteed.

The solution: Analysis of sources of error | Establishment of continuous monitoring

To address the issue of impaired data transfer with partners and suppliers, we analysed the situation to define actions and set up continuous monitoring to ensure that the actions were having an impact and that the overall situation was stabilising. We used Alteryx Designer to develop analysis processes based on data from various sources (Microsoft Dynamics Finance & Operations, EDIFACT XML from EDI providers, Excel analyses and historical data from Exasol databases).

The goals achieved: Rapid identification of the causes of problems | Automated analyses

• The simple integration of the various sources and data types made it possible to quickly identify the causes of the problems in each case and to derive suitable measures.
• With the help of Alteryx's scheduling function, the analyses could be carried out automatically, thus reducing the response time many times over.