EDI integrated, effort reduced: Digital processes at Kerbl

Albert Kerbl GmbH is an international production and trading company with headquarters in Buchbach and Ampfing and sales offices in Austria and France. It offers a uniquely broad, high-performance range of accessories for animal breeding and husbandry throughout Europe that is constantly adapted to current trends. Whether in Europe, Australia, Russia, South Africa, the USA or Saudi Arabia, the products of Albert Kerbl GmbH enjoy worldwide recognition.

Previously, Albert Kerbl GmbH had implemented electronic document interchange (EDI) with the help of an external service provider. The
invoices or reminders were sent conventionally by post.
by post. When the obligation to digitally sign documents was abolished, Albert Kerbl GmbH began looking for a solution that would enable both the exchange of EDI documents and the fully automated sending of documents via e-mail. The declared aim was to exploit the know-how of the in-house development department and minimize dependence on external service providers. Furthermore, for many of the company's customers - which include large corporations such as Dehner, Amazon, BayWa and Fressnapf - electronic document exchange is a prerequisite for approval as a supplier. This is exactly where the Yaveon solution comes in.

The company was looking for a solution that is fully integrated into Dynamics NAV, offers standardized implementation from a wide range of partners, but is flexible enough to be compatible with customer-specific extensions to the system. Yaveon is a holistic solution that covers all these requirements. Kerbl's ERP system has grown over the years/NAV versions and has been optimized according to its own needs. The integration was correspondingly challenging.

"Yaveon's expertise is outstanding and the solution met our exacting requirements," explains Florian Wandinger. "We had also looked at simple modular solutions with which we could only cover simpler requirements, but Yaveon offers a top solution for implementing more complex requirements. We also have the option of integrating our own developments very easily," says Wandinger about the scalability of Yaveon.

Wandinger also emphasizes both the technical and human cooperation: "Basically, everyone knows their own software best!

In other words, as in all other areas of life, you first have to get to know each other. After a short familiarization phase, however, we and our consultant quickly got to know each other and we were always able to communicate on an honest and transparent basis. The support was consistently competent and relevant. We wouldn't want to be without the consultants at Yaveon!"

But Albert Kerbl also uses non-standard formats. Smaller customers often do not have the option of sending standardized formats such as EDIFACT. In this specific case, such purchase orders were provided as a simple CSV file. Thanks to the standardized framework, these documents are also processed without programming. With the support of Yaveon, Kerbl created a mapping to import the documents. Once this has been done, the data is validated and processed as usual. The external format is of secondary importance here. This means that flat files or XML files can also be exchanged without any problems.

Yaveon's industry-specific ERP solution guarantees success in terms of work efficiency: two years after implementation, Albert Kerbl GmbH works largely independently with the Yaveon solution. The starting signal was given with the setup of e-mail dispatch. Sales documents such as reminders, invoices, order confirmations and credit notes are now preferably sent electronically. A process automation rate of 99% has already been achieved for reminders.

In Germany alone, over 300,000 documents were sent via the solution. For this reason, e-mail dispatch is now being successively set up for the French and Austrian clients. "This is of course a great thing for the sales staff. The time and cost savings through automation are enormous. Our customers also benefit from the e-mail dispatch. They now automatically receive a list of upcoming direct debits, which is well received. Setting up the e-mail dispatch was very quick and easy," enthuses Florian Wandinger. The Deputy Head of IT at Albert Kerbl GmbH adds: "For our company, the combination of creating and maintaining jobs and the continuous optimization of business processes is the ideal way to keep up with the times." Currently, a large number of EDI partners (in several clients), which were previously converted by the external service provider, have already been replaced and are now processed directly in Dynamics NAV without any detours. Albert Kerbl GmbH paid particular attention to the independent connection of the systems - which is possible thanks to the technical in-house expertise and simplicity of the Yaveon solution.