The client is a manufacturer of customized golf clubs ranging from drivers to putters, while also providing apparel and accessories.

The client has many retailers and distribution channels to support. For many of these retailers the inability to provide a secure and reliable automated Order and Invoice System means more customer service interaction and additional costs.

The client needed a solution that would allow its key trading partner’s orders along with other partners’ orders to be automatically processed by the client’s order processing systems and would also allow for automating invoicing transactions. This had to be accomplished without requiring changes to either client’s or its key trading partner’s internal business processes and IT platforms. The electronic data exchanged between this partner and the client had to leverage the Internet for reduced cost but security and reliability had to be guaranteed.

Sogeti USA designed and implemented an e-Procurement solution for the client and its partner based on the Microsoft BizTalk Server platform. Sogeti USA leveraged the latest e-Business technologies including Microsoft’s .NET platform, ASP.NET, VB.NET, C# and XML/XSL to design a state of the art B2B integration solution that exceeded the client’s expectations. An enterprise service bus was created that will allow other trading partners to submit and receive electronic documents with ease.

The solution developed enables purchase orders to be submitted from trading partners via a web portal, and also provides for transmittal of invoices from the client’s back office systems to trading partners. The client provided Sogeti USA, Inc. with the necessary data schemas for use with BizTalk Server 2004.

Sogeti USA used an incremental approach to integration – starting with a low-risk project, getting it into production and then building on it with successive projects.

The client now processes all the key partner’s orders and invoices instantaneously upon receipt of the EDI XML business documents from the partner’s FTP location. This represents a substantial improvement over the old manual business process. Sogeti USA design allows the client to realize substantial cost savings while providing a measurable improvement in customer satisfaction.

The solution eliminated the tedious and complex hand coding required to connect disparate back-end and e-business systems. They interoperate seamlessly with all major integration platforms across J2EE™ and .NET™ environments, and connections can be fully reused to support any type of integration project, including composite business applications and web services initiatives.