Danone Enhances Customer Experience with IBM

Danone is working with IBM to provide a secure trading network that helps expedite and automate business transactions with Danone's customers, business partners and suppliers. IBM is replacing Danone's existing network to increase the flexibility and responsiveness of its business-to-business (B2B) commercial interactions to improve its overall customer experience.

 

"IBM's Sterling team was quick to react to our requests for increased flexibility in meeting trading partners' needs," says Hans Vollebregt, EDI solutions at Danone Information Systems. "The company also has a proven track record in Europe in providing B2B integration as-a-Service. And the team's willingness and ability to meet our needs is what made all the difference in our choice of a B2B partner."

 

Part of IBM's unfolding Smarter Commerce portfolio, IBM's Sterling Collaboration Network, is being rolled out across Danone's global business units, each including multiple sales and distribution points and factories. The large-scale deployment involves the onboarding of up to 600 trading partners to the IBM network and management of nine million messages a year.

 

The project supports the full spectrum of Danone's order-to-cash processes, including ordering, invoicing, delivery and logistics. The solution provides traditional electronic data interchange (EDI) across a diverse range of formats required by Danone's partners, allowing third party data to be integrated with Danone's warehouse data.

 

IBM's solution was selected by Danone with the expectations to improve flexibility in its ability to respond to the individual needs of its customers, which include large retailers. By delivering real-time visibility and control over the business processes shared with its community of customers and partners, IBM's Sterling Collaboration Network is also expected to bring Danone accuracy and speed in responding to customer demands, largely enhancing the customer experience.