ELVI increasingly benefiting from EDI

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ELVI increasingly benefiting from EDI

Elvi Latvija has been able to convert 30% of its orders and invoices into EDI documents in 1,5 years. This means significant automation in Elvi’s supply chain processes.

Elvi Latvija SIA is a franchise holding company that unites 24 retail partners. In Latvian FMCG market company has 100 food and non-food retail stores under the brand name “ELVI” and 67 specialized beverage chain stores “ALK Outlet”.

At the beginning of 2018, the company made the strategic decision to start electronic document interchange (EDI) between group partners and their suppliers. The company already had previous experience and understanding on how the EDI process should go. When launching the project last year, Elvi chose Telema as its only EDI partner.

Prior to EDI, goods were ordered by email, telephone or with the help of the sales agents. Although such ordering process seems to be ordinary, it consumes a lot of store staff time that could be devoted to more important issues. A lot of time was also wasted in goods receipt, checking delivery quantities and prices from paper delivery notes. With EDI, those issues are now solved automatically.

Elvi IT Director Raitis Zālītis explains: “We are confident that electronic document interchange (EDI) will make our supply chain processes more efficient. We have connected 40 suppliers to EDI this far, and connecting each additional supplier only reinforces that conviction.”

As Elvi and ALKOutlet’s 167 shops have around 140 suppliers and 40 of them are already connected, this means a 30% electronic document flow. The goal over the coming years is to reach 80% to improve the supply processes even further.