Brakes cuts EDI costs and boosts customer service in Kewill outsourcing deal

16 November 2006

Sale, UK - Brakes, the UK’s leading supplier of food to the catering industry, has contracted with supply chain management solutions specialists, Kewill to enable the exchange of business critical supply chain information with over 120 customers. By utilising Kewill FoodServicesXchange, a hosted EDI and connectivity solution, Brakes will be able to improve partnerships and service to customers and suppliers, as well as reduce its EDI costs.

Brakes undertook an 18 month review of its IT infrastructure and made the decision to outsource to EDI partner, Kewill, enabling its in-house IT team to focus on other business critical projects. Kewill will provide the business with the flexibility it requires to meet the market’s ever-changing EDI requirements and its transition from traditional EDI to more recent standards and protocols such as AS2 and XML.

Companies within the Brakes Group now exchange orders and invoices with customers and suppliers through a variety of mechanisms including post, electronic messaging and via a telesales team. Adopting the Kewill FoodServicesXchange as its business-to-business integration hub will reduce Brakes' cost of processing this information manually and reduce its value added network (VAN) costs. At the same time, visibility and information on key documents in the purchase-to-pay process will be enhanced and become a key differentiator for the future.

"Based on our experience with Kewill in our recent AS2 project we were happy to select them as our business-to-business integration partner for the broader business. The Kewill FoodServicesXchange will provide the business with a single point of visibility and control for all our business-to-business integration requirements. Furthermore, the flexibility the solution provides in messaging and protocols will enhance our ability to connect to and exchange information with our customers as simply and easily as possible," said Tracy Costello, Brakes UK IS Director. "The initiative will benefit our telesales team by allowing them to focus on the customer rather than order processing issues and we look forward to seeing reductions in our data transfer costs and greater supply chain efficiency, leading to increased cash flow and sales."

Jacquie Boast, Managing Director of Kewill Solutions commented, "The relationship with Brakes has grown over time and like many businesses in today’s market they do not like to take unnecessary risks, especially in a critical area like receiving customer orders. The service that Kewill was able to prove through a recent project on AS2 has developed the relationship to a point where Brakes is happy to entrust Kewill with its entire customer facing EDI process. The flexibility that the Kewill FoodServicesXchange provides companies is twofold; firstly the ability to increase its EDI capabilities with no increase in internal costs or resources and secondly through the reduction in external costs overall as the customer benefits from Kewill’s ability to consolidate the message handling and reduce third party connectivity costs."

About Brakes

Brakes is the leading supplier to caterers in the UK and France, with a turnover in excess of £1.5 billion. Its strong understanding of the needs of the catering industry, combined with innovation in both products and service, has seen Brakes develop into the leading foodservice solutions provider. Brakes is also a significant supplier to the foodservice market in France.

About Kewill

Kewill Systems Plc is a leading international company dedicated to the development and provision of software and services to manage complex business to business supply chains.

With over 34 years' experience in the supply chain space, Kewill Systems is a long-time innovator of Supply Chain Execution software focusing on order management, transportation management, international trade logistics, Ecommerce and visibility solutions for global trading communities.

Over 55,000 customers have trusted Kewill Systems Plc for the management of their supply chain information including household names such as 3663, A.N. Deringer, Bhs, Brakes, DHL, Debenhams, Fedex, General Motors, General Electric, Glasgow City Council, GroupDirect, Hastings Direct, Insurecom, JD Williams, Littlewoods, Marks & Spencer, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Panalpina, Philips, Polaris, Pratt & Whitney, Nisa Today’s, Sainsbury's, Texas Instruments, TNT, Toys R Us and UPS.

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