The Overview
As a global defense contractor to government and private entities worldwide, the company must ensure secure and reliable communications with its clients.
However, as the defense company gained more commercial customers, the size of its trading partner community grew quickly, and its current B2B integration system—though robust—could not scale to support this.
This put the reliability of communications with its clients at risk.
The organization was running on an outdated version of IBM Gentran: Server for EDI. The EDI team had invested in custom scripting and modifications to the system to enable it to do what was required. However, while it had served them well in the past, they recognized it was time to upgrade to a new system.
As a global enterprise working on sensitive projects, it required comprehensive B2B integration capabilities that would enable top-notch security, while supporting their rapid growth.
At the same time, the company needed to avoid data loss and downtime during the process of migrating to a new system.
Its team needed an experienced partner they could rely on to help them choose the right solution for their needs, while ensuring a smooth and successful implementation.
Choosing the Right Partner
Early in the decision-making process, the team researched and explored numerous solutions and providers. After preliminary discussions on viable B2B integration options with Eliassen Group, they realized they had found the right partner.
Eliassen Group, an IBM Platinum Business Partner, built a trustworthy relationship with the company and provided invaluable subject matter expertise during the decision-making process. Eliassen Group’s reputation and previous work in over a thousand successful B2B integration projects stood out from the competition.
The Solution
After gathering a deep understanding of the company’s current and future needs and requirements, Eliassen Group assisted the team in selecting the IBM Sterling B2B Integrator solution.
And with the knowledge and experience of Eliassen Group, the team’s fears and concerns were addressed around the possibility of losing the work they put into their old system. As a result, they decided to move forward with the upgrade.
IBM Sterling B2B Integrator offered the robust security and visibility features and centralized control that the company’s sensitive work required. It offered the company a wide variety of new capabilities, including:
- A highly-scalable solution to support a growing trading partner community
- Any-to-any data mapping and translation capabilities
- Support for numerous communications protocols, data formats, and files
- World-class security and protection of sensitive project and company data
- Automation of complex business processes
Achieving Benefits Faster
Eliassen Group designed the solution and completed the upgrade. Choosing to leverage Eliassen Group’s B2B Framework helped complete the upgrade as quickly as possible, minimize downtime, and onboard their business partners speedily.
Leveraging best practices gained across numerous implementations, the Eliassen Group B2B framework provides the company numerous capabilities including:
- Over 300 pre-built and standardized processes, maps, style sheets, and services to minimize implementation time and need for custom development
- Pre-defined, configurable processes for communication, translation and routing needs
- Detailed information about document status, protocols, sessions and business processes
Seeing Results
Overall, the Eliassen Group B2B Framework enabled the company to begin utilizing the IBM Sterling B2B Integrator solution much sooner than without it.
It also reduced trading partner onboarding time down to just two minutes, enabling the company to begin collaborating with their business partners and clients in far less time.
In addition, the B2B Framework eliminated the need for custom scripting and outside processes, cutting down on the IT hours spent managing the business processes in the system. The simplified system possesses more B2B automation capabilities than ever before, while minimizing human error and strengthening the integrity of the system.
The Eliassen Group Advantage
IBM Sterling B2B integrator with Eliassen Group’s B2B Integration services and B2B Framework provided the company with a B2B integration solution that met the defense industry’s strict standards, supported its growing trading partner community, and met its requirements for security and high reliability.
Furthermore, by speeding up the implementation process, Eliassen Group helped the company begin to achieve the solution’s widespread benefits quickly and cost-effectively.
Our Services
We offer comprehensive, end-to-end services and innovations including:
- EDI and B2B Integration Solutions
- Assessments
- Strategy and Roadmaps
- Architecture
- Implementation Services
- Upgrades and Migrations
- Mapping and Translation
- B2B Trading Partner Management
- Outsourcing and Managed Services
- Solution Health Checks
- EDI and B2B Cloud Services
- Training
- Ongoing Support Services
