EDITEL Journal EN 2/2020 by EDITEL Group

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PRAGUE

B R AT I S L AVA

BUDAPEST

ZAGREB

KRAKOW

EDITORIAL

VIENNA

A matter of trust

The events of recent weeks and months have been weakening our society’s overall sense of security. Therefore, a certain level of skepticism and uncertainty has creeped Gerd Marlovits into realms of life not directly afCEO fected by recent events. One of them is data security. As an EDI service provider and ”data hub,“ we strongly believe in strengthening our clients‘ trust. We are in a position to do that because we also have trust: we trust our tried-and-tested technology of 40 years and we especially trust our employees who give their all to keep things running smoothly and also take our technology to the next level. To cement our clients‘ trust with hard facts, we periodically undergo audits that certify that we meet the requirements and specification of certifications and seals of approval (see our lead article on pages 1 and 2). When it comes to communicating with their business partners, security and trust are key for our clients. In this issue, you will find a few examples that illustrate the decisive role EDI plays in achieving this goal. Clients in many different industries and countries use EDI for ”trustworthy“ communication processes with their business partners, including Brau Union Österreich (page 2), the Vox Group in Poland (page 3) and Herlitz in Hungary (page 4). Ultimately, they place their trust in us as well. It comes down to this: it is a matter of trust all around. Happy reading, Gerd Marlovits

IN SAFE AND TRUSTED HANDS Data handling is increasingly becoming a matter of security and trust. To give their clients peace of mind regarding responsible data handling, EDITEL relies on renowned and objective audits.

“T

rust is good, control is better.“ Did you know that this widely used saying is attributed to the former Russian revolutionist Lenin? While this adage might have been the foundation of the communist ideology back in the day, it has become increasingly relevant in recent times. Fake news, especially on social media, are undermining trust in our society

and people are becoming more and more skeptical about everything they read, hear, and see. Digitalization is a particularly sensitive area because it requires us to trust others from a distance. In addition, digitalization goes hand in hand with globalization, both for better and for worse. As a result, consumers are increasingly demanding that companies ensure

IN BRIEF 7 reasons for EDI’s ongoing success story www.editel.eu/7-reasons-why-your-business-should-bepart-of-edis-ongoing-success-story Business Monitoring for maximum workflow efficiency www.editel.eu/edi-solutions/business-monitoring

How to successfully connect pre-suppliers www.editel.eu/how-to-successfully-connect-pre-suppliers Good interfaces are crucial www.editel.eu/good-interfaces-are-crucial

P.S. Have you seen our EDI Blog? Please visit www.editel.eu/edi-blog for periodic information and interesting news from the world of EDI.

ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE n safe and trusted hands 1 IAudits for responsible data handling n brief IOther news from the EDITEL Group n safe and trusted hands - continued 2 IAudits for responsible data handling better... and secure! Good, Digital sales partner network of Brau Union Österreich hen chickens roam and move 3 WCloud-based software solution with EDI is the key to the efficient world... EofDIfurniture DI has never been so vibrant 4 EImplementation of EDI/PKI function for Herlitz rom standard to mandatory use FXRechnung to German authorities

The EDITEL JOURNAL is published as a supplement to GS1 Information in a total of 13,000 copies. It is available in German, English as well as in Czech, Slovak, Hungarian and Croatian for our international clients. To download the Journal as an epaper, please visit www.editel.eu/ editel-journal. If you have any suggestions, please contact us at info@editel.at

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transparency, accuracy, and accountability, especially when it comes to handling people‘s data. Since it is widely known that everything revolves around data at the EDI service provider EDITEL, ”security and trust are a top priority for us,“ said Gerd Marlovits, EDITEL‘s CEO. ”After all, every year we process approximately 400 million transactions from roughly 20,000 companies via the EDI network eXite, and all of them need to be protected.“ EDITEL guarantees a fully fail-safe infrastructure as well as security features and control mechanisms that are updated and improved on an ongoing basis to meet state-of-the-art technology standards. Following the ”Trust is good, con-

trol is better“ adage mentioned above, EDITEL periodically undergoes external audits to receive official and objective assessments for data security. For Gerd Marlovits, this is an important step to ”show that we are fully transparent, which increases our clients‘ trust in our services.“

Audit of the internal control system: it‘s a pass! EDITEL once again underwent the ”ISAE 3402 Type II“ audit and successfully passed it. This audit was performed by EY, an independent auditing and consulting firm, and gives assurance to a company‘s clients that it has flawless internal processes. The audit included a review of the adequacy of quality assurance activities for all services provided to clients: security and application operations, software development quality (change manage-

ment), international support services and, for the first time this year, the implementation of GDPR requirements. EDITEL has fully met all ”ISAE 3402 Type II“ audit specifications. For EDITEL and its clients, this audit report provides quantifiable proof of the efficacy and security of its processes and the ongoing review and optimization of all internal control processes even after the audit.

According to Gerd Marlovits, it is ”highly relevant for us to review and optimize these processes on an ongoing basis. Our successful ”ISAE 3402 Type II“ audit report underscores our efforts of setting the bar very high when it comes to our security environment,” he said. n

editel.eu

GOOD, BETTER... AND SECURE!

Discover how Brau Union Österreich relies on EDITEL to digitally manage a large part of its sales partner network.

”to find a common denominator for all of them,“ said Ms. Lang. Despatch advices for a total of 60 Brau Union Österreich sales partners are now sent via EDITEL in a secure and traceable process. We make things especially convenient for our clients: as soon as data is received, EDITEL performs a validation service for all despatch advices. As a result, only correct data are forwarded to Brau Union Österreich. If any inconsistencies are detected, e-mail notifications are sent out so that clients will know immediately what the problem is. When it comes to the implementation of the project, Sophia Lang said it was ”very effortless“ and found it ”extremely helpful that EDITEL oversaw all processes with our individual retail partners.“ n brauunion.at

rau Union Österreich has a total of approximately 49,000 clients in retail locations and F&B and ultimately serves millions of beer enthusiasts around the country. However, Brau Union Österreich needs help in

IN BRIEF D igital management of sales partners via the centralized platform eXite® S ecure and traceable transmission of all despatch advices V alidation service by EDITEL to ensure correct data sharing O nboarding of all sales partners performed by EDITEL

the logistics department to ensure deliveries to all its clients from its 32 locations. This is where dozens of external sales partners come in, who make deliveries on behalf of Brau Union Österreich. This is undoubtedly a significant challenge for information logistics. For each of the 200,000 annual deliveries, different sales partners have to send order-specific delivery notes to beverage retailers in order to start the in-house invoicing process. Brau Union Österreich has been in business for a long time and has previously tried a variety of approaches for managing its sales partners. ”It was a system that had grown organi-

cally and had different communication channels, which was a result of our heterogeneous sales partner structure,“ said Sopia Lang, IT Functional Consultant at Brau Union Österreich. ”Occasionally, we would have to resort to ‘manual‘ action or look for specific data sets.“ This prompted the company to ask its long-time EDI service provider EDITEL to find a solution to this issue. EDITEL‘s centralized data hub eXite® was the obvious technical solution. Going forward, Brau Union Österreich plans to get all its sales partners ”ready to use EDI.“ Given the differences among participating partners, the biggest challenge was

ABOUT BRAU UNION ÖSTERREICH AG With its 2,700 employees, Brau Union Österreich sells a total of 5 million hectoliters of beer per year. Its range of products includes fifteen leading beer brands, more than 100 different types of beer, and a series of innovative concoctions. The company sells international premium brands such as Heineken and Desperados, popular Austrian premium brands such as Gösser and Schwechater as well as regional best-selling brands including Zipfer, Puntigamer, and Wieselburger. In 2003, Brau Union Österreich became part of the international Heineken family.

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ABOUT WANDERHUHN GMBH © Wanderhuhn GmbH

The core of the concept behind „Wanderhuhn GmbH“ founded in 2014 by Wolfgang Wallner, a pasta manufacturer, is a ”mobile chicken coop“ that is moved every eight days. That way chickens always have fresh grass for pecking and lay high-quality and exceptionally tasty eggs. A total of 17 farmers are under contract to use this system and deliver manually gathered and packaged eggs to Wanderhuhn‘s collection centers. These premium eggs are currently sold at SPAR and Merkur stores in Upper Austria.

WHEN CHICKENS ROAM AND MOVE... ...they lay the very best eggs! A solid system is key to get these eggs to clients.

t’s quite impossible for chickens to have a happier life... this is the thought that immediately comes to mind when you take a look behind the scenes of ”Wanderhuhn“ (the company name translates as ”Roaming Chicken“) to see how their egg-laying hens are kept. They are so happy because they have mobile chicken coops specifically created for this purpose, which are regularly moved to a different location. That way, chickens always have a green meadow, which makes them peck away happily. In addition, there are other things that make hens happy. One example is that chicken flocks are smaller than normal: while 6,000 hens typically live in a free-range coop, at Wanderhuhn there are only 1,250. Wanderhuhn’s goal is to make chickens happy, and there are several

challenges that must be overcome to make this happen, specifically when it comes to logistics: this is mostly about registering eggs at the packing station as swiftly as possible and then dispatching them to retailers. After all, ”time is of the essence when it comes to selling eggs,“ said Franz Denk, Wanderhuhn’s managing director. Since April of this year, Wanderhuhn has been saving even more time thanks to the interaction between a cloud-based software solution by its ERP partner Winfo Data and an integrated EDI interface by EDITEL, which allows for fully automated data exchange. Orders (ORDERS) placed by SPAR are received as jobs in Wanderhuhn‘s ERP system and the process is fully automated. These orders are then filled without delay. In addition, invoices are also au-

ABOUT WINFO DATA GMBH

tomatically sent to SPAR headquarters as electronic EDIFACT documents (INVOIC) and can then be processed without any manual entry. ”Other than saving us a lot of time, this ensures high process reliability with virtually zero transmission errors,“ said Franz Denk. When asked about the implementation of this project, Mr. Denk highlights the ”easy and smooth processes.“ Just as an aside: the entire project was implemented during the lockdown caused by COVID-19. The successful project was a result of the tried-and-trusted collaboration between Winfo Data and EDITEL. Günter Winterstätter, managing director of Winfo Data GmbH, agrees: ”As an IT systems vendor, we believe in selecting business partners who can work well with our software

The IT systems vendor Winfo Data GmbH is headquartered at Braunau technology center and has been in business since 1988. The company is one of the oldest IT service providers in Austria. A total of 14 employees work on constantly improving the company‘s proprietary software products. In the past few years, approximately 400 clients in German-speaking countries have chosen to implement the modular ERP/CRM system ”Modern Office.“

developers. For us, EDITEL Austria is the number one choice when it comes to EDI interfaces for the automated data exchange between our clients and their business partners. The ‘Wanderhuhn‘ project is impressive testament to the benefits such a solution has for all involved partners,“ he said. n wanderhuhn.at, winfo.at

EDI IS THE KEY TO THE EFFICIENT WORLD… …of furniture! Especially if we take a look at VOX Capital Group, one of the most innovative companies in Poland’s furniture sector. Only in Poland? No! VOX solutions are available in more than 50 countries around the world, e.g., in the U.S., Russia, Australia, and Taiwan. In Poland, this furniture brand serves its customers through a network of brick-and-mortar interior design showrooms and an online sales platform. Around the world, a total of 120 showrooms are available. 50, 120,… these are quite large numbers, which are not surprising for a big player like VOX. But there is one key issue where the ideal solution is only a 3-letter word: efficient and timely communication with partners thanks to EDI (Electronic Data Interchange).

High-quality services ensure customer satisfaction For the dynamically operating and constantly evolving VOX Capital Group, communication with customers from all over the world is key for the

efficient provision of services. Therefore, at three companies owned by the Polish tycoon in the furniture industry, EDISON S.A., the Polish subsidiary of EDITEL, successfully introduced EDI communication services. Hence, a lot of technical aspects had – and still have – to be considered. EDISON integrated a sophisticated Enterprise EDI application designed to feed numerous entities (GLN numbers) into VOX’s centralized SAP IT system. The solution comes with a powerful tracking portal as well as a secure longtime archive for electronic invoices. In order to ensure the highest level of data quality, EDISON permanently validates incoming data according to certain rules, all covered by premium SLAs which is a must for internationally operating VOX retailers.

Comprehensive support from day 1 EDISON believes in being there for its clients from the very beginning. Oftentimes, companies lack resources

that would allow them to quickly and efficiently incorporate their business partners. EDISON was in a perfect position to close this gap and guide VOX’s business partners through all stages of the process: getting in touch with them initially, performing all alignment processes on various data formats and communication protocols and last but not least the technical solution itself. Ultimately, the entire order-to-cash cycle was implemented using orders (ORDERS), despatch advices (DESADV), invoices (INVOIC) and even the Polish version of correction invoices (CORINV).

What´s next? VOX Capital Group and EDISON S.A. have a long-standing business relationship of more than 14 years. Over time, the scope of collaboration constantly grew and as of today, EDISON has connected more than 14 of VOX’s business partners across 5 countries. And yet, this is not the end of the story since VOX is planning to roll out EDISON’s services to the

white spots on their global EDI map. Undoubtedly, this is strong testimony to the existing trust in the long-lasting collaboration. n

vox.pl/en/

ABOUT VOX GROUP The VOX Capital Group is made up of companies and brands from the interior design and home finishing industry. Its core is the VOX brand, which has a network of 170 stores in Poland and over 300 dedicated outlets abroad. The company’s portfolio includes unique and functional products and services for furnishing apartments and houses. In addition to furniture, the company also offers doors, floors, wall systems, and decorative articles. The many awards the company has received at international trade fairs and competitions, such as ”must have,“ “good design“ and the IF Design Award, speak for its unique product range.

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EDI HAS NEVER BEEN SO VIBRANT

he Herlitz brand is vibrant, colorful and follows current trends. Over the past 100 years, its trusted school and office products have made it a world-famous and popular brand of stationery. The secret of its success lies, among other things, in the fact that it was the first to combine functional products with trendy design. Today, Herlitz offers a wide range of stationery products with a trendy look – and it’s not just its products that are up to speed with modern times. It is no coincidence that innovation is

one of the company’s key values. Herlitz Hungária Kft. has been using the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) service for many years ever since the company decided to use this solution widely. For that purpose, a change was made to the ERP system while EDI orders and invoicing combined with web service communication were introduced. In addition, PKI invoicing, for secure, authenticated, yet simple data transfer was implemented. ”Since we already had existing processes in place, we mostly focused on tailoring them to

these EDI functions,“ said Mihály Gráf, IT Manager at Herlitz Hungária Kft. The joint project with EDITEL Hungary lasted from December 2019 to March 2020. Herlitz decided to introduce eXite® precisely because they needed a product that could adapt well to the technological capabilities of their new ERP system, enabling them to take advantage of web service communication. eXite® is a comprehensive platform solution that covers many business processes ranging from EDI communication, EDI integration, e-invoicing, digital archiving, business monitoring all the way to web EDI. ”The biggest technical challenge was to implement the EDI / PKI function with web service communication concurrently with the ERP implementation, so that we could use it as soon as the system was in place,“ explained Mr. Gráf. “We chose EDITEL because of their excellent and flexible customer service. Luckily, collaboration between these two companies went smoothly since the start of the project, which has allowed us to meet tight deadlines.”

Since March 2020, Herlitz has been receiving orders and forwarding e-invoices through the new system. While nobody knows what the future, especially the year 2021, holds in store, one thing is for certain: thanks to the implementation of Electronic Data Interchange, Herlitz is all set to face any future challenges. n herlitz.eu

ABOUT HERLITZ HUNGÁRIA KFT. Herlitz Hungária Kft. is a stationery wholesaler. The Budapest-based company, with annual sales of nearly HUF 1.5 billion, primarily serves the domestic market and sells exclusively to resellers. Herlitz, with its German roots, has earned a well-deserved place among Hungary’s most popular brands.

IMPRINT ISSUE 2/2020

Owner and publisher: EDITEL Austria GmbH, 1040 Vienna, Brahmsplatz 3; T: +43 (0)1/505 86 02; e-mail: info@editel.at www.editel.eu

XRECHNUNG: FROM STANDARD TO MANDATORY USE

he deadline is over! Effective 27 November 2020, all contractors to the German federal government are required to submit electronic invoices only, i.e. to issue so-called XRechnung invoices. This means

BRIEF OVERVIEW: E-INVOICING TO GERMAN AUTHORITIES andatory for service providers since 27 M November 2020 Applies to jobs from government agencies of EUR 1,000 net and higher Invoice data must be converted to the XRechnung format Invoice submission to the authorities handled by EDITEL

that for all companies that issue invoices to German federal authorities and have not yet switched to electronic invoicing, urgent action is needed. Luckily, switching to XRechnung is not as complicated as it might seem. EDITEL has a very straightforward, secure, and legally compliant solution for its clients: the fully automated transmission via the PEPPOL network. Upon request, EDITEL will also take care of invoice checking, conversion to XRechnung as well as automated transmission. In Austria, for instance, e-invoicing to federal authorities has been mandatory since early 2014 and this was mostly very well received. “EDITEL has been helping many renowned companies in all

things e-invoicing to authorities for many years and was very well prepared for the introduction of XRechnung from an early stage,“ said Gerd Marlovits, CEO of EDITEL. n editel.eu/edi-solutions/ e-invoice/xrechnung

BENEFITS OF E-INVOICING ignificant cost savings S Paperless invoice submission Automated processing Faster payment Higher data quality Digital archiving

EDITEL Austria GmbH is a wholly-owned subsidiary of GS1 Austria GmbH. The corporate objective of EDITEL Austria GmbH is the electronic data exchange between business partners, the sale of the required software and support services. Management and responsible for the content: Gerd Marlovits Editorial staff: Daniela Paar, MA, Anja Jung Proofreading : Dagmar Jenner, www.texterei.com Translations: English: Dagmar Jenner, www.texterei.com Czech and Slovak: Martina Pokornà, Linda Stanislavová Hungarian: Adrienn Horváth, Bettina Hernádi-Szekeres Croatian: Nataša Burič, Marija Lunjek Layout: www.creativedirector.cc Disclosure pursuant to Austrian Media Law as amended in March 2009: the purpose of this newsletter is the promotion and support of EDITEL Austria‘s business activities.