Atlas Delivers Substantial Cost Savings for Customer Bwg Foods

Atlas and BWG Foods are now working on the next phase of an ebusiness programme that has racked up substantial cost savings.

BWG Group is one of the leading food and drink businesses in Ireland, supplying a network of 900 stores as well as operating a chain of 22 cash and carry stores.

As the operators of the Spar, Eurospar, Mace and XL brands, BWG Foods, together with its partners, employs around 20,000 people. The company sources products from more than 550 suppliers and deals directly with more than 14,000 customers. Through its branded retail estate, it serves in excess of one million customers each and every day.

Like many retailers BWG was looking for innovative ways to streamline its supplier invoice approval process to improve the accuracy of its data, to reduce the number of supplier invoice errors and to reduce costs.

BWG consulted the retail industry’s ebusiness experts – Atlas – and as a result 99% of BWG suppliers are now using a new Atlas solution designed to achieve these objectives.

Cuisine de France, one of BWG Foods’ largest suppliers commented:
“We have found the price matching and listing process a lot easier and more efficient. Should any price or listing errors occur, we now know almost instantly, whereas historically we were dealing with a lot of “old” price claims, which involved significant time and resources.

“The Atlas system is user-friendly and changes are updated usually next day by BWG Foods. The Atlas cost card system has made our invoicing process a lot simpler and we would not be without it having now successfully integrated it into our business.”

Trusted

BWG entrusted Atlas to drive its EDI roll out using Atlas’ proven supplier adoption methodology. This included a proactive and comprehensive communications exercise offering suppliers the opportunity to trade electronically using either traditional EDI or Atlas’ easy-to-use web solution, branded as BWG TradeLink.

The TradeLink web portal enables suppliers to enter their invoices and credit notes manually, or upload them in spreadsheet form. Suppliers also upload or key in their product and price information which is synchronised with BWG’s cost cards.

All invoices – whether submitted by EDI or through the TradeLink web portal – are electronically matched to goods received notes, price files, promotions and cost cards. Any mismatches, errors or other issues are resolved using the portal’s collaboration capability.

Automatically identifies discrepancies

The Atlas solution automatically identifies discrepancies, against price, quantity and several other criteria, producing reports to advise suppliers thus giving them an opportunity to amend and resubmit their information.

Automated checks ensure that volume discounts, agreed prior to ordering goods – sometimes running into thousands of Euros – are enjoyed in full. A typical spreadsheet system cannot always achieve this without the intervention of significant numbers of people.

Only when electronically checked and passed as accurate do invoices go forward to BWG’s accounts system for payment to agreed terms and conditions.

Benefits for all

BWG has seen significant benefits from the collaborative nature of the solution:

• Problems that previously required resolution in both the buyers and suppliers systems – consuming considerable resources – are now solved in a single system of record that provides both parties with ‘one version of the truth’
• The resulting process discipline has meant that only accurate transaction and reference data enters BWG’s back office systems
• BWG’s supply chain team and its suppliers now operate best practice, to agreed timetables, for the benefit of all

Cost savings every day

Said Aidan Keane, Financial Director at BWG Foods:

“Atlas has helped BWG make sunbstantial savings since installation and continues to deliver cost savings every day across the buying, supply chain and finance functions.

“We are now working with Atlas on the next phase of our ebusiness programme to drive further cost savings and operational efficiencies.”

Allan Gray, Atlas’ Managing Director commented: “Atlas is well regarded in the ebusiness world and we have a significant number of major retailers such as BWG who regard us as a strategic partner, providing not only EDI and web EDI, but also a range of cloud-based business applications serving the entire supply chain.”