SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite Reviews

We use it to connect via EDI with our trading partners within the EU region and with other regions, including, America.

It's an off-premise solution. We have a secure file transfer server where we are placing the files or picking up the EDI, and then they connect and put the files in or take them away. On the SEEBURGER side, we then connect into their portal so we can then see the information about the message flows, etc.

We don't yet have any examples of how it's improved the way our organization functions because, so far in our deployment, we've just migrated over what we have, as is. We've moved all of the existing connections with our trading partners and messages across from OpenText. In the next financial year, starting next month, we'll start looking at onboarding new trading partners and really making use of the standardized messaging that we have with them, for converting to the other trading partners' formats.

What I can say is that it has met all of our requirements, to date. We are in the process, in the next couple of years, of migrating to SAP, and they have two or three different mechanisms for natively integrating with SAP. But because we're not there yet, we haven't made use of that. Currently, we are using a simple file transfer protocol mechanism, but it's fully meeting our B2B requirements.

We are looking to introduce some new message types this year, such as processing vendor invoices. That would include receiving the invoices via EDI, linking that to our ERP, and SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) automatically doing the processing. So we're expecting to achieve some additional operational efficiencies.

If SEEBURGER plans to do something, they will meet their target. We haven't been disappointed by them at all. For example, we had six trading partners to onboard and they said, "We'll make it happen," and they did make it happen. They did exactly what they said they would do. That's a really positive thing.

I have also had a lot of good feedback from SEEBURGER and have really been kept up-to-date about the status. With some companies, a salesperson will say something but then the technical people don't deliver.

We get a monthly SLA report. We have SLA targets with them that were set in the contract, and they report against those. So far, there have been no breaches of SLA. You can also go onto their website and view real-time information so you can monitor the performance if needed. With SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) I've got really good visualization.

For the area that we've used them for so far, I don't really see any way that they can make it easier. I can't say enough about how they have delivered exactly what they said that they would, and for the cost and in the time that they said it would take. They're bang-on there.

We implemented in the last quarter of 2019, so we're coming up to around six months in terms of the live environment.

At the moment, there has not been a single problem. We haven't had any issues after going live; 100 percent uptime. They've met all of the SLAs. The message-processing time in the SLA is up to one hour; in reality, it's been about 10 seconds.

There have been no performance issues and no outages. And if they do have an outage, then they've got disaster recovery plans to mitigate.

Scalability was the whole reason we went with SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS). Our hope is to add 20 to 40 trading partners a year. Because we've done the groundwork, we've done our initial messages, we don't need to do anything more from an integration point of view. Now it's SEEBURGER's job to connect their platform to our trading partners' platforms. That was the whole selling point.

Our entire organization is the intended beneficiary of our SEEBURGER deployment. At the moment, we've only actually got it linked into our Germany and U.K. offices, but we're expanding use in the coming months into our Italy office, for suppliers, customers, and e-invoicing.

I had to raise one ticket during the implementation, and I was using it as a test, really, to see how ticketing works. They were really good and responsive, and I was kept up to date.

The ticket was actually auto-raised by the system because a message had tried to come in, but they weren't able to process it. I then received a phone call because it could have been an urgent situation. It turned out the person's sender ID hadn't been set up correctly. It was my typo when I gave the information to SEEBURGER in the new system. But it was dealt with and resolved fantastically.

So far, I have had no issues with tech support. Nobody receives 10 out of 10 because there's always room to improve, but I would say their support rates a nine out of 10, although I can't say what they would improve.

We were already doing EDI previously and using OpenText as a communication platform, as a VAN (value added network). The problem with OpenText is that they'll pass through your messages and the dealings that we've had with them, but they don't really do the message conversions and the like. And we are looking to expand quite a lot in terms of trading partners in the coming years using EDI. With SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS), we can just send one message between us and SEEBURGER and they will do all of the hard work with the trading partners. Whereas previously, with OpenText, if each trading partner had a slightly different variant of EDI, we would have to make the adjustments ourselves.

Also, all of the EDI conversion into our ERP was actually done using a bolt-on to our ERP. Because we're moving to SAP at some point, that bolt-on was not compatible. But that is where I gained my experience, because I had to create the mappings between the EDI messages and our core internal procedures.

The move away from our old solution was about the scalability. Previously, I was spending a lot of time doing the mappings myself, as well as the onboarding and dealing with all of the headaches related to that. In addition, because we're moving to a system that doesn't have that EDI bolt-on, which is the SAP solution, we needed to find an alternative. Finally, because we wanted to rapidly increase the number of trading partners that we're connected with, we would have had to take on an additional resource. That's where the price-benefit came in.

For me, the setup was straightforward. We really planned the design out together, how it would work. We had a couple of meetings at our office. They came down to visit us, both the technical people and salespeople, to make sure that the technical people were able to deliver what the salespeople were promising. We had a planning workshop, and we said, "Okay, these are the types of messages," and we described exactly how they'd be coming into the FTP server, the kind of folder structure we had to create, the permissions, etc. Once the planning was done, we implemented according to plan, and it was fine.

We had a kickoff meeting, which involved members of SEEBURGER's sales team and their technical guys. Then, we had a second meeting with the technical guys, a meeting that was a bit more in-depth about how we were going to achieve what we wanted. We had to provide information like the trading partners' formats, the trading partners' mailbox settings, the types of messages we were using when interacting with those trading partners, etc. Then we decided the best method for communicating our messages to them. To establish that securely, we had to create a VPN tunnel directly to SEEBURGER's systems and get all that tested up. Each portion of the build was tested independently and then, as a whole, we did some end-to-end tests. It went really well.

From start to finish, the deployment took about a month. It went really quickly.

After the deployment was ready, we had some additional time with our trading partners to do some end-to-end testing before switching over to live. That way, our trading partners were happy. We only had about seven or eight trading partners that we were migrating across, but from SEEBURGER's side, they just made it happen.

On our side, it was just me, and it wasn't full-time. We did a couple of hours one day, a little bit of time another day. There was more time spent in the weekly progress updates than in actually doing things, from my side. I wasn't involved doing the work.

We worked directly with SEEBURGER. I have quite a lot of EDI experience so I understood quite a lot of it and that may have helped.

Compared to our previous solution, SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) is more expensive. But our previous solution isn't compatible with SAP so we would have had to migrate to a solution like SEEBURGER's at some point. It has cost us more money to migrate to SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS), but in three to five years' time, we should start to reap the benefits.

We hope to start seeing ROI by the end of this year, once we start getting more trading partners onboarded. We're paying for a set monthly amount but we have only reached about 10 percent usage. Once we start approaching in the vicinity of 60 to 70 percent usage, then we should start getting an ROI. That's not SEEBURGER's fault, that's our fault, because we're not ready to be at that stage yet.

In terms of manpower, once we start to get some of these more automation processes in place, there could be a one or two headcount reduction in terms of the related tasks.

The only thing that would be an improvement would be if they had a cost model whereby you could just pay for what you're actually using. Even if it were a minimum monthly charge that they offered, if you're not utilizing all of that then they should consider a lower tier. That way, they could attract more business.

Aside from the standard usage fee there's an onboarding cost. I don't know if our prices were hardly negotiated or whether there is just a de facto price. But, in addition to the normal monthly, system-running costs, when you want to onboard a new trading partner, there's an onboarding cost. 

If you want to do any additional types of messages, there will be an implementation cost related to each message type. If you are onboarding like 10 or 20 trading partners at a time, they also have a project management cost for a defined project manager who's your main point of contact. That's how they make sure that everything gets done according to the time that they said that they were going to do it in. I've used third-party project management before for our ERP provider, and they've been shocking. So we tend to do a lot of project management ourselves. But SEEBURGER delivered. I was super-impressed.

We looked at a company called NetEDI as well as TrueCommerce. There were two more but they were discounted right at the beginning because they didn't have time for us. NetEDI EDI was ruled out quite early on so it came down to two companies.

TrueCommerce seemed really promising but I was reading a lot of negative stuff in the press and online about them; that they promised that they will deliver but they don't deliver. The sales guy was really good, but if the tech people behind it can't do what they say they're going to do... I looked at the review sites, like IT Central Station, to find out. That can sway the impact of your decision-making.

The biggest lesson is to understand the monthly fees and whether or not you're going to be making use of all of the data cap at the time of go-live. If not, try to plan for expansion so that you're maximizing the use of what you're paying for.

SEEBURGER take a lot of the headaches away from you. That was the main point of it. We were very demanding about the contracts. We got them to amend their standard contracts to meet our requirements. Make sure that you read the contacts thoroughly and that you understand all of the implications. Know what's expected of you and what to do in the implementation in ongoing phases.

We haven't really had to do any maintenance since we've migrated to them. I am the primary contact in my organization. I'm trying to bring one of my colleagues up to speed about what EDI is, to start him off from scratch. He has no knowledge of it at all. But the main point with SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) is that you don't have to have the knowledge. They take all the hassle away from you. I'm just in a bit more of a privileged situation because I do have the knowledge. But the point is, you say to them, "All right, I have these five trading partners. If I want to reduce our costs, what information do you need me to get from them?" I can then request it and pass that back to SEEBURGER. Or we can pay SEEBURGER a little bit more money and they'll do it end-to-end. It depends on the skills you have in-house and how much you want to do yourself. They'll take it all away from you, or you can still do a bit yourself.

They also have other solutions that we haven't taken onboard as of yet, but we could consider in the future. They have some integrations with the tax authorities, like making tax digital. We have a branch in Italy and SEEBURGER have an Italy e-invoicing solution, in accordance with Italy's government policies. But we already have the solution for that, so we don't need it. Integrating into customs is another one, but we don't really have a case for that as yet. So it's not just the EDI, it's a whole framework of things that they can offer.

If we have any new requirements, they said to send them to them and they'll put together a proposal. It's really an area that they specialize in. When we were selecting SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS), we were looking at a few different other options. But they really have a high number of trading partners already with them in the automotive business. So that's hopefully something that we can make use of in the future when we're onboarding. Hopefully it will take a lot less time.

I look at the fact that SEEBURGER invests a high proportion of revenue into R&D instead of promoting brand awareness like this: If you haven't got a good product then no one's going to buy it. By putting that money back into the R&D, they're also making sure that they're meeting any new requirements that come up in B2B activity. For me, it's a thumbs-up.

They have a lot of offices globally. One of the good things for us is that we are able to deal with sales and technical people based in the UK, but they do have offices throughout Europe and America and Asia. Some of our company's regional operations are also looking at SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) as a solution because they can talk in the local language. That was another really good point about SEEBURGER. And because we want to deploy onboard trading partners throughout Europe, they have people who can talk and work in the same countries as those people. That helps to take away those language barrier issues.

Also, they're a wholly-owned business by themselves. They're not a sub-organization of anyone else. That was quite an attractive thing for us. They've been around for a long time. They've got a lot of integrations into many ERP systems including the one that we are looking to — SAP. They seem to have it all.

Our primary use case is to send EDI documents between our partners and vendors. We're also starting now to use it as a development tool to translate SAP idocs to EDI messages and vice versa. 

When we first started, we had different systems and application, six or seven of them, globally. Using SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS), we have reduced the number of EDI communication tools. Now, we just have this one.

The solution can support B2B/EDI, EAI, and/or ERP integration requirements. The one thing that they are pushing is that they are a single solution that can meet all those needs. It's nice to have that in one system, versus using multiple systems.

It has also increased the level of efficiency in our company's operations by about 30 to 40 percent because everything is on one tool, supporting many people at the same time, worldwide.

The SEEBURGER solution has saved us money. Although there are other tools out there that do the same thing, if we had to buy those tools it would cost us more. The money that we spend on maintenance, for example, gives us the ability to communicate with other partners without having to use another tool or another partner. That's where our cost savings are. 

I like that the tool has all the adapters — all the possible protocols that are in the industry. You pay for those adapters but at least it's all in one package. You don't have to get another tool or application to support another partner. It doesn't matter if you're in Europe or if you're in North America, the solution they have is global. It can support pretty much anything and anyone.

It's rather difficult to understand, from the application, what's broken and why it doesn't work. We typically need to get support from them directly, and it's usually in a consulting role, to fix issues.

Also, the training they provide is not really adequate. They sell you things that you can use to design things in your own way. To get them to show you how those work is very difficult. To get them to explain how their application works sometimes is difficult (depending on the customization that was done) I would like to see them build training courses and I would have no issue paying for them. Everything I know about the application is self taught.

In addition, if we ask one consultant, we get one answer and if we ask a different consultant, we get a totally different answer. If we ask someone in Europe, even within the same company, we get a different answer again. They're not globally aligned in terms of what their application does and how it's actually installed. Depending on who you talk to, you get a different answer. You could say each consultant or software engineer has their own way of implementing BIS. They could do a better job if they collaborated more internally and talked to the customers and asked questions so that we could give them examples and tell them where they could do better.

Also, their release strategy, in terms of number of updates, is very demanding; it's very quick. SEEBURGER releases an update every month, if I'm not mistaken. It would be nice if they could do semi-annual releases that are not really needed. If something is broken, you can always ask them to provide a hotfix. We can't keep up with the number of patches they have (even though we may not need it). Every time they send a patch, we have to retest everything. They could improve the frequency of their patches and maybe provide a procedure to test everything so that we don't spend hours or days validating their latest update. We don't know what that patch is going to do. We have to test it and we need a team to test it. It's something that we do overnight. We have to check every adapter, every process row, all the modules in their solution.

We've been using SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) for roughly 10 years.

It's stable. They're always improving it. Their next release, coming out next year, has a lot of improvements. In terms of stability, they're moving in the direction of selling a standard. That's the right way to go.

The scalability is really good. That's one of the biggest features. Depending on the size of your company, how much data you have or frequency, their solution can manage it. You can grow vertically or you can grow horizontally. It really depends on the business. They have the capabilities to grow and expand and handle all that architecture.

In North America, our company has smaller needs for scalability compared to what we've seen other companies do, although it is bigger than our European side. We do have certain things that Europe doesn't have, different components or boxes in front of the SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) server, such as proxy servers. Security is different in North America. We have a second node that handles more of the high-volume transactions, but we really haven't fully utilized it yet. We're just getting it up and running now.

We have two production SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) applications, one for Europe and one for North America. Behind them, there are quality environments. Behind them we have another instance for their compliance checker, which is another tool. We also have a development box and a sandbox for initial patches and upgrades.

Technical support is good. The person who answers your ticket is the person who is going to solve it. They don't typically have level-one, level-two, and level-three support. The person who handles the ticket is an expert. They're users of the system. In most cases they can help you. In other cases, they will seek the support of their developers or consultants because it's out of their scope, and that's a normal way to handle those situations. Overall, the support is good.

We had a couple of previous solutions. One was Cleo LexiCom. We also had something called EDI Gateway and that's what we were using mainly, prior to this one. 

SEEBURGER is an SAP partner. When we bought SAP, because we were going with one global ERP system, our operation in Europe chose SEEBURGER at the time. I was not part of that decision but I'm happy to say they made a good choice. 

I wasn't involved in the installing of the solution. I was more involved in the configuration of it. In terms of configuring it, I didn't find it hard. If you know EDI, and you understand how protocols work, you won't find it too difficult.

It took me about nine to 10 months to migrate from one system to a different system. That covered about 40 plants. In terms of deployment, it's quick. It's just a matter of physically doing it, getting in contact with your partners and telling them, "Hey, I'm switching from this IP address to this IP address." I found it easy.

We used SEEBURGER consulting. We already had one instance in Europe. North America had to get its own instance and I was in charge of making sure that that happened: getting it installed, explaining to the consultant that these are all the flows we have today, and these are all the software components we have today. How do we put all that stuff into one box?

Our experience with them was very good. The person that we used is still with the company.

We realized savings after five years. We needed additional development as well as some minor things that we use in our company that they didn't have in their standard solution. It took us time to understand the product. During those five years we were consulting with them and needed their support to understand their tool. After that, a company should be able to be self-sufficient.

We pay maintenance of between $75,000 and $100,000 per year. The costs are based on your original purchase solution. 

As far as I can remember, the company looked at IBM Sterling and at outsourcing.

Have a good understanding of what your business is. Understand what protocols you need to support. Know what your volume of transactions is and what the latency is of those transactions. Do you have to deliver those transactions in five seconds or do you have to deliver them in two milliseconds or do you have to do it in five minutes? If I were buying software that would be my question to the vendor: How long does your tool take to go from point A to point B?

The lessons I have learned from using the solution is that their tool can do many things. It's a full B2B solution, which is nice. They have additional software that you can tie into it. If your company ever needed something really specific to communicate with another backend application, or to convert an email to an Excel, or an Excel to an EDI file, their tools can do all that.

We have around 30 to 40 people using it or who have access to it and different components of it. Their roles range from database administrators to people who monitor the servers themselves. Our EDI analysts use it and managers use it as well. SAP level-two support people use it. We have five people who are involved in updates and maintenance of the solution, including an operating systems administrator, a database administrator, IT operations, and my team that validates that updates were done properly.

The fact that SEEBURGER invests a high proportion of revenue into R&D rather than promoting brand awareness is fine. They emphasize that quite a bit. They don't spend a lot of money marketing, like SAP or Oracle would. I'd rather them spend more money on R&D. That's where the value is. They're spending money to ensure that, with any new technologies and any new security threats or issues that come up, their application stays afloat.

We may look at SEEBURGER'S API feature but it's a little bit early. We have an API management tool already. When we went to them looking for this some years ago, their tool was nice on paper, but it wasn't a reality. SEEBURGER has invested in the last couple of years and has come up with some tools. I don't know how many companies are using it, but I think it's a little premature right now for us to buy it. But it might be something that we switch to. Ten years ago, none of that played a role in our decision. It was more that our company had been using SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) in Europe over the last three years and we needed to get the North American side of the business on SAP and to be on the same type of system.

Because I've seen some other products, I'd rate SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) a nine out of 10. That's only because I know what they're capable of doing and there's room for improvement. It's not perfect, but their solution is probably one of the best ones out there.

On-premises

It is primarily an EDI translator for us. We have over 1,000 trading relationships running through it, totaling a couple of million documents. We don't just have EDI flowing through the platform. We have XML documents from some partners, and other things flowing inbound and outbound. But the bulk of it is EDI.

Our deployment is on-premise. We went that way because we knew the cost of doing it the other ways was more expensive. And in general, that is the model that we use.

The benefit of using SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS), one that we like to tout right now, is the interaction of the solution's front end with the CMA module that we purchased from them. We're able to create surveys around testing processes and the automation of the actual testing. Using that survey, it will link to the SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) front end so that partners can actually do testing on their own. They get feedback and data testing, based upon our actual requirements around EDI documents. It works 24/7.

The reason we tout this so much is that we had a backlog of 100-plus partners. It was taking an average of 66 days to get a partner up, from start to finish, through all the documents that we require. This solution has reduced it down to an average of six days, with zero backlog. That's a significant improvement.

We were having to do a lot of it manually before and this is one of the big things that we hype. It's a combination of both suites: the CMA component with the SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) front end. That's by far the biggest benefit that we can name.

We use some of their other tools, like the Imart web platform, for some of our smaller vendors. That has been helpful in reducing the cost on their side from having to do EDI.

But the SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) front end, in and of itself - having that EDI translator straight out-of-the-box - and being able to move stuff away from IT development into the actual business side, has been helpful.

Also, with the alerting and everything else that we get out of it, we're a lot more efficient. We're able to focus more on problems with our partners, versus reacting to systemic issues. We don't see a lot of systemic problems through the platform, so we're able to respond to our partners in a quicker fashion.

Among the most valuable features are the EDI translator and a lot of the components which enable creating compliance sets. Having something standard, out-of-the-box, and being able to use that has been a huge benefit for us. We came from a system, in the past, where we were having to manually create all that on our own, and it was very time-consuming and costly. Being able to do that out-of-the-box has been great.

Another aspect that we employed in the last year-and-a-half has been their CMA platform component, which hooks to the SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) front end. We've been able to set up an automatic testing process for our partners. They can walk through and test all their documents, in the sequence that our company would be expecting to pass and exchange them, without any interaction with someone in our company.

They made improvements to the email error alerts that go out, for the EDI technical. Those typically go straight out to the partners. Those messages are significantly clearer and easy to read. The same messages in the front end are not nearly as clear. It's supposed to be the same error, but the message that goes out for EDI is really easy for anybody to read and understand, but you have to be really solution-savvy to understand the message in the system itself.

That is the component that we definitely have the biggest issue with. Unless we want to go search for an email, trying to read the actual message in the platform is tough.

Also, some of the functionality for retriggering documents, where you have to step through a termination process and then retrigger it, versus just being able to restart or retrigger more easily, is a bit challenging, depending on the scenario.

Three to five years.

We had some incidents during the first year but it seems to have become more stable every year, as we've learned something, or figured out something. During this last year-and-a-half we've had almost zero incidents.

We have no problems with its scalability. We did a performance test where we did about eight times our volume through it in a single hour, for an entire heavy week, and it handled it. We've had no issues with it. Everything we've added to it - multiple documents inside the implementation, different components to it - we've had no issues. It's handled it all.

If I just look at the consultant we have who is dedicated to our company, he's awesome; great.

There are some challenges with the Premium Support. I don't know if it's because they're based in Germany. I know our infrastructure at times has been posing the wrong information questions. But it's been challenging at times, and other times it's been great. Part of the problem is that they always want the logs and those aren't always available. But for the most part, support has been good. For what I've had to use them for, their response times have been fairly good; within expectations.

We had an older version of webMethods, which was not an EDI translator. Comparing SEEBURGER BIS vs webMethods, the latter was just a communications broker. We knew we needed to switch for a long time. We got to the point where we could no longer upgrade that platform or do anything else because of the heavy customization and programming that had been done to it.

Because it was something brand new for us it was challenging, but I would expect that with most programs. Where we struggled the most was with some of the training that we got from the SEEBURGER team. Until we had a more sit-down discussion with them, we were a bit challenged, especially on the business side. That had more to do with the trainers than it did the actual platform itself.

We started the deployment in June of 2015 and finished up putting in the last document in October of 2015. Our deployment went really fast, surprisingly. We actually had projected it to be 18 months, and it took us significantly less, once we got rolling.

In terms of an implementation strategy, once we got through all that, it was getting in the servers. We had a lot of EIP stuff (Enterprise Information Protection) they had to work through. Then we started out by moving over specific documents, based on business processes and then communication protocols.

I can't remember on the IT side how much of our staff was involved in the implementation but we had the Business Operational Unit involved. The operational team had six full-time employees and two development groups. We also had two change-management people and two IT people who directed. They were the IT people we were worked with directly in bringing up the business part of the process. There were other IT focused on the hardware and internet connection changes. We also had one full-time, dedicated SEEBURGER consultant here with us on-site.

For maintenance on a day-to-day basis, the way our EDI operations are set up today, there are four full-time employees and one manager. They work on SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) and everything we have flowing through it, as well as all the partners. In addition, we have two development people but they don't use it on a daily basis.

We did it directly with SEEBURGER.

With all the new processes and stuff that we've added, one of the big benefits we've seen is that we've never had to increase headcount. We've been able to accommodate everything. Because of SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) our development, and ourselves on the business side, have been able to stand up new documents, new processes, new flows, with a reduced headcount. It's enabled business to handle more of it, as opposed to being an IT function.

There was a big list, including the IBM solution. There were six other platforms but it was three-and-a-half years ago.

Both our US and Canadian operations evaluated the same companies then, and SEEBURGER was chosen in Canada. When we did the evaluation again, here in the US, we ended up with pretty much the same results. The fact that Canada was using it helped make the decision to go with it.

My advice would be to make sure you have a good, strong change-management group which can assist and help along the way. If you're not coming from something like we did, it can be a struggle getting people to adapt and change. It's not so much the system, it's the people that'll be utilizing it. It also helps if you have a strong SEEBURGER consultant there who makes sure that your IT people fully understand what's expected and where they're going with it.

We don't use the Landscape Manager at this time but it is something we're looking at.

In terms of the Active-Active feature, that's part of IT while I'm on the business side. I know it's being utilized. We have had very few issues with the load volume passing through it. It handles it well. Sometimes we see a few spikes, but they don't last and they don't cause any system issues.

When it comes to adding integrations, the way we're utilizing it, a lot of it seems to be pretty fluid. We haven't had a ton of issues. We use middleware. We don't allow direct-connect to any other platforms, at least on the US-side of our operations. We have various file formats that we have to convert the documents into, and putting them through message queues, or through the NAS Exchange, has been pretty easy. If we have issues, it seems to be on the other side of the ball, where they didn't set up their interaction or integration correctly.

We increase the usage every year. To give you an idea, 99 percent of all our purchase orders through our vendor partners run through the platform. The one percent are new partners who are still working at getting their EDI up. For the purpose of trading most documents with us, the bulk of it goes through this platform, whether it's invoicing, shipping notices, purchase orders, changes, etc.

We're looking at what they're offering for the 6.7 upgrade. We're definitely strongly interested in the new Message Tracking upgrade. Landscape Designer is being looked at for our infrastructure group, for being able to handle upgrades and service pack upgrades. And there is the potential move, eventually, to go to 6.7.

I would give the platform itself an eight out of ten. As I said, I have a problem with the error messages that are in the system.

The reason that we bought the product was that we have a very robust healthcare inventory environment in SAP here at the university. That involves huge inventory, purchase orders with 300 lines, electronic invoices, 856s, 855s. We knew we were going to have to have some standalone EDI ability here. That was the main goal of getting it, which we very quickly accomplished.

Coming into the SAP implementation here, coming over from our legacy EDI product, at that time we had 12 EDI vendors. It took us 12 years to get those 12 vendors, due to the limitations of our legacy product. Now, there are many hundreds because of SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS). We easily have 300 vendors now.

Before, we were completely limited by the ability of our legacy system. Our ability to react has gone up 1,000 percent. What improved was the ability to bring on who we wanted when we wanted to at the pace we wanted to. Before, if our legacy software did not already have an EDI arrangement with the vendor, we couldn't do EDI with them. When we got this, we were off to the races. We were free to connect at will with whomever we wanted to. It gave us freedom.

When we brought in SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS), we had one hospital, back in 2009 or so. We bought another large hospital and we picked it right up. We put it right on. EDI wasn't even a factor. It added no complexity to bringing in that new hospital.

Certainly, the majority of all of the inventory transactions and all of our PunchOut Catalog for research areas on campus go through EDI. 

We use SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) EDI for invoicing for our pharmaceuticals, where they handle the invoicing and invoice approvals. We then bring the electronic invoices into SAP from there and they go to an automatic hold in SAP and then they're released. So we have been able to use SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) to provide big invoicing solutions. In fact, here at the university, just for pharmacy alone, we're probably bringing in over $40 million a year in electronic invoices through SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS). It's easily in the neighborhood of over $100 million when it comes to meds, surgery supplies, and healthcare.

While we use it for EDI, straight up, for electronic invoicing and PO communication and confirmations, it is flexible to where we can bring it in to accommodate specialty solutions for the university such as payments for pharmaceuticals.

Number one, the ease of integration of the SEEBURGER product into SAP was pretty seamless. There wasn't any trouble, there weren't any complexities.

SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) also allowed us to connect EDI vendors at will.

We use SRM here as well and it's required at our university that we use EDI for all of those, for that PunchOut functionality, so that we have full-blown automation with it, in and out; for the purchase order going out the door and getting the invoice in, etc. 

What it has really brought to us is the ease of connectivity to the outside world, to do B2B. No paper, everything is electronic.

More than five years.

It's an extremely stable platform. It has no flakiness. We don't have to baby it.

We've been able to flex it where we needed to, to accommodate other silo systems, outside of our core component applications. It's about to be tested again when we get into this new P2P solution we're looking at. I've still got SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) on the table as part of that solution, so I would say that it's very scalable.

When I log a ticket, they come back within half-an-hour to an hour, either by email or I'll get a call. I maybe have one ticket a year, if that. There haven't been many, but they've always been very responsive, and pretty quickly.

The response that we get and the knowledge of that individual that responds are high-quality. It's not like we get a phone call back from someone who's appeasing us until they can get the real guy to fix it. When we get a response back from support, it is an individual who understands the issue and provides the solution.

Service and support have been excellent from SEEBURGER. We haven't really needed to use the product for a whole lot of other things - and I'm sure it's totally capable of them. It's one of those products where it's doing a very powerful thing for us, but you just don't hear about it because we don't have a lot of issues with it, unless we have a server that does down. But that would be an internal problem. It wouldn't really be a SEEBURGER issue.

We had a legacy system called Enterprise Solutions, and it was a healthcare-specific procurement and inventory system that was born in the late 1980s. When we decided to go to SAP in the early 2000s, our legacy system was going to be sun-setted. We had to do something because our then-current product was dying. When we decided to go with SAP, it did not natively deliver the EDI functionality. We went and got SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS), we bolted the two together, and moved forward.

One of our guys was a systems programmer coming into this. When we got SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS), it was clear that it was going to take more of a technical person. It does take a technically-rooted individual to operate it. It's not something for your everyday guy to do. For what it's doing for us, a dedicated resource is required. You have to put a real technical dude in there to run it.

Like anything new, there's a learning curve, but it wasn't that difficult. It just hasn't been hard.

Our deployment took about a week. We put it in and turned it on in a week, and that's including firing up the box and loading the software and getting our guy up to speed. The deployment was extremely quick, and because it does integrate so well with SAP that made it easier too.

The implementation strategy was that we knew we were going to go big-time EDI when we went with SAP. That was a real requirement for healthcare. They told us they do EDI, we asked a few people about them, and did a bid for it. They came with just an unbelievably great price. The university bought it, and they put us in a room with two guys from SEEBURGER and we figured out how to get it in, and it's been there ever since.

We did have our implementation partners, who were helping us put in SAP at the time, from LSI Consulting, and they did help us with the SAP connections. We also had a couple of other consultants at the beginning.

We went from 12 EDI vendors to 300 in a very quick fashion. We have exceeded the estimated ROI with SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS).

The pricing is cheap. In fact, when I saw the pricing, I thought, "Really? What's the catch?" But the functionality that we get out of it, for the price we pay, is great value.

We had IBM come in and do presentations. We had Sterling Commerce come in and do presentations. And we had a conversation with SEEBURGER. 

IBM came in here, they sent 15 guys and tried to sell us a solution that was doing 50 things that I did not want, did not need, did not care about. They didn't understand that, no matter how hard I tried to explain it to them. All they wanted to do was to tell you about how wonderful they were and how powerful this tool was that they wanted me to pay a million dollars for. 

Then, the second vendor, which was Sterling Commerce, toned it down some, but it was still a very potent tool. And the price was very high. 

I had specific requirements that I had to meet for EDI. When SEEBURGER showed up on the scene, they said, "Okay, we'll give you EDI, and check out this price." It was everything that we needed to get done, and even today it's still what we need. They didn't overkill it. They didn't try to sell me a whole bunch of stuff that I didn't need. They sold me the right functionality at the right time at the right price.

The first thing I would say to anyone looking at a solution is to make sure you understand your requirements. That's where you have to start with any product solution. Then, make sure you buy what you need to accommodate your solution, but no more. Don't get caught up in the moment and the bells and whistles. Get what you need. For someone who is looking for a killer EDI solution, SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS), if you ask me, is hard to beat. 

We're not out there doing things like mobile data entry. We're not a power company or a telephone company that's doing billing from work out in the environment. We're not a cable installer sending the bill back to the company for the service he just performed. We're doing invoices from vendors. Natively, that's the root of where SEEBURGER grew from, and it's solid for us.

Regarding the SAP S4/HANA migration, at this point, we are planning on moving to S4 around the 2020 timeframe. We've been very much in a road-mapping process. We've got a number of large initiatives to complete. Right now we're on ECC 6, 7, 8. We're at the point where we cannot upgrade any farther. We're on the latest version of SAP we can go to without going to S4. The plan is to definitely go there in 2020.

We are also in the process of looking at a new P2P solution. We're going to replace our SRM incidence for a couple of reasons. SRM is just not doing what it really needs to be doing and we need a much prettier front-end shopping experience. It's another opportunity for us to look at our business processes too. With that, we're going to probably do a lot of the cXML stuff out the door, to vendors, through that product. However, I do still see the use of the EDI stuff for our hospital inventory solution. I don't see an end to that anytime soon. I still see SEEBURGER very much in the future with S4, here at the university.

We use it for its core native functionality right now. When we move into this new P2P solution that we're looking at, we will do whatever we can to utilize SEEBURGER functionality in that solution. We're at the cusp where we're about to run into a situation where we're going to ask more of SEEBURGER, but that's still in the planning stages.

With SEEBURGER, pretty much what we do is EDI. We don't do a whole lot of other things with it. We do all the standard stuff, 858s, 855s, 810s, 856s. And that's okay because it's doing its job it is doing it well.

In terms of users, we have our EDI guy and he pretty much lives and breathes this solution daily. Then there's the materials management team that handles procurement and inventory solutions for the university and is made up of two functional people and three technicals. We have a chief developer, an interface developer, and our EDI developer, who is our metadata guru guy. So we have three people here at the university who know how to keep the solution going on a daily basis.

Our instance is still very much on-prem. We've got servers in our own data center, the database is onsite. It's not in the cloud. Obviously, cloud solutions are the future, and one day we'll get there, but we still love on-prem here. We do have some cloud solutions, like SAP Ariba Contract Management, but we're not full-blown committed to cloud life yet.

We don't use the Landscape Manager. We'd be very much interested in finding out more about that.

We do plan to increase usage. We continuously add new EDI vendors. It's not uncommon that we get one a week and we do plan to involve this solution as much as possible with our P2P solution, going forward.

Computers are machines created by men. So anytime human beings are involved, every once in a while one of the lights is going to turn red. That's part of life. But as far as a scale of one to ten with SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) goes, I give them the ten. We're just not beating down the doors of the SEEBURGER folks saying, "Man, we got issues here." That just hasn't happened. If there was anything like that, that certainly would pull me off of that ten, but it hasn't happened. It does everything, and more, that we've asked it to do and at a very economical price.

We are an automotive parts supplier and we exchange purchase orders, releases, shipment forecasts, as well as ASNs—shipment notifications, one of the most important documents—invoices, and some non-EDI files. We support North America and South America, but we have colleagues in Europe and Asia as well. We are communicating with most of the automotive companies: Ford, Volvo, Magna, Chrysler and we use SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) for transactions in the automotive field.

We also use the translator, BIC 6 Converter, and most of the protocols for communication: AS2, FTP, SFTP, HTTP, OFTP, FTPS. We also communicate with some banks.

We have been able to automate processes using SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS). For example, we have a lot of scheduled tasks or jobs that automatically pull information from other FTP servers, according to a schedule. These automatic flows or processes have reduced costs in a lot of environments, for sure. There are fewer people needed for a specific process in the plant. Also, the timing and accuracy of the information have improved which also helps reduce costs.

It has also helped enable digital business processes in our organization. A lot of processes are now in our BIC 6 system, which helps to improve operations in our plants.

In addition, we only have 30 minutes to send ASNs to a partner, and if this is not achieved we can be subject to fees or lose points in programs, which is not good for the plants. We accomplish this with SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS). Similarly, payments and invoices are sent using the BIC 6 application and the time it takes to receive payments has been decreased.

All of its features are needed for our business and the EDI we have with all our partners. Among the most important are the 

• BIC 6 Converter 
• communication protocols, which have the newer security features for certificates and encryption
• communication with SAP, which is our core system 
• SEEBURGER BIC 6 front end.

In addition, the B2B portal is a good improvement, a good solution.

It's really the complete system that is the most valuable for us.

There are a lot of service packs during the year. I know that part is the process for updating features, but sometimes it's difficult to update service packs every month.

In my current company I have been using SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) for four years, and I used it in another company for five years.

It's very stable. We have not had too many issues with the stability of the system. During the year there may be one or two out outages, but in the last year we haven't had any big issues.

Our company is always growing, so we will need a more robust system and, eventually, we will have to go to the cloud. We are very close to having to grow our SAP system. SAP will definitely go to the cloud at some point, so we will need to grow our system, hardware, and architecture in our data center, and BIC 6 for sure.

The scalability is good.

The support is good. 

There is an issue in that sometimes I try to send all the information in my first email, such as the logs and system information, but the ticket that results is different, and support asks for information that we already sent in the first email. I don't know what helpdesk or system they use, but that delays support a little bit. Since I am in Mexico, I end up waiting for another seven or 10 hours to get an answer in which they ask me for something that I already sent. It's not a big deal, but it's an opportunity for improvement.

We had an issue with a certificate with one of our trading partners on a Saturday. We called SEEBURGER support. It was a little difficult because they needed to contact a developer who was not available. But the next day the issue was fixed, and we got the support.

Also, because sometimes there is a delay in the number of service packs we have, when support is needed, the answer is always, "You need to update your version of the service pack." So a reduction in the number of service packs during the year would help. I think 6.7 and the cloud have something along these lines, but for customers like us who are on-premise, the service pack upgrades are difficult.

But as a company, they are always in touch with us and trying to give us what we need. That is the most important thing. They want to see what our needs are and what our current situation is.

We did not have a previous EDI solution.

The setup is not complex. Sometimes what can make it complex is the number of flows or the amount of information. But in terms of the application itself, it's not complex.

The solution is deployed very quickly, even in minutes. The complicated part is testing all the flows with the new solution. That part can take months. For the last upgrade, it took about five months because we had to test all scenarios and business cases. When we found issues we had to report them to SEEBURGER. They had to fix them and we had to install the solution and test it again.

For upgrades, here in Mexico, there are two people from our company who are involved. In Europe there are another four or five more. The same teams manage it on a daily basis. We have developers, people on the communication teams, and business analysts using it. Overall, there are about 10 people using it in North America, and in Europe there are another 10.

It provides the flexibility to start small and pay as you grow. The flexibility there is good.

The biggest lesson I've learned from using the solution is that integration is always possible. I have learned that there are many ways to integrate and exchange information in a timely and accurate way.

Having accurate information on time is the most important thing for me. That's the way other people can make decisions. SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) helps you to do that.

SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) provides us with the solutions we need. We will see with version 6.7 if there is something else. I know there are more features in it. But for now, with version 6.5.2, we have all that we need. We want to see if 6.7 will give us other things that we can use.

To be honest, for us, the most compelling reason to upgrade to 6.7 is the end of support for our current version. If we don't upgrade, we won't have the support. But at the same time, the new version should have some improvements that will make things easier in our jobs and daily operations. I have heard that it has many new applications and a new portal. We could survive with the current solution, but there won't be fixes for it any longer. Also, it's good to have a new version with new APIs and new features.

On-premises

We use it mostly for data integration. We use a module from SEEBURGER called Managed File Transfer or MFT. We move about 30,000 to 50,000 files in a week in our company. The files are moved intracompany but they also move between our company and our external partners. We also have a bunch of stuff on Amazon. We use SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) to integrate our data center with Amazon file transfers.

Before this product, we used to use a solution that required us to write code and then go through the process. It would take five to seven days for our development team to do the code, test it, and then promote it. The SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) MFT solution is really configuration-driven. It comes with a number of adapters for file transfers. Some of these processes, which used to take five to seven days and cost an average of $5,000 per integration, can now be done in a couple of hours because of the configuration. And they cost less than $1,000 dollars overall. We are able to do faster delivery and it's much more robust, handling large files really well. And it does bring cost savings.

It is also flexible when it comes to adding integrations. We have created some frameworks and we are able to utilize those frameworks very quickly. The solution is really handy in those terms. For example, when we bought the product, we had a requirement for transferring data to Amazon S3 buckets but we did not have a solution in our shop for large data transfers to Amazon S3. We worked with SEEBURGER and created a framework solution and now, using that solution, we can configure the transfer in an hour or two and enable it to go to existing or new S3 buckets. It's a tremendously powerful solution and it gives us a lot of leverage to get things done quickly.

It's a very robust solution and it's very configurable. Before this product we would use an ESB-type of solution which required us to write code and go through a process. We can configure the SEEBURGER solution much more easily, instead of writing code. It does its job very well, to the extent that we do not see failures in the system. It can handle large files very well, which is one of our bigger concerns. We transfer some bank files up to ten gigs in size and it handles them really well.

Larger loads can be handled either by Active-Active or Active-Passive. The Active-Active definitely provides high up-times so if one of our nodes goes down, the other nodes still continue to work and we are not totally down. It meets our requirements for "five nines".

There's always room for improvement. One of them is that the product is not integrated very well with different cloud providers. We did work with the vendor to build a solution for Amazon, but there is no solution for other cloud providers like Google or Azure. The vendor needs to create adapters so that if we have a requirement to transfer data from our data center to another cloud, outside of Amazon, we would be able to do that. 

Another issue is that support for the vendor's operating system is not available. There used to be support for the older operating system over SMB, but they have discontinued the support. They need to come up with a solution to support the new Windows operating system.

More than five years.

It's a very stable solution. We do not see much of a problem with it. We may have to re-start the solution once a year at the most, but that's part of our regular maintenance cycle. The solution is very robust and stable.

I don't think the scalability of the solution is that great because they have tied the solution to their named nodes and it does not allow scalability like some of the cloud products.

We have the Premium Support and we pay extra for that, and it gives us access to their engineers. It also requires the vendor to respond within three hours, if we create a Severity 1 ticket. But we have not had many problems.

We switched mostly because of efficiency and cost reasons. Our previous solution required a lot more development and SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) is a much more configuration-driven solution.

It is a complicated solution, it was not a straightforward setup. We leveraged their Professional Services to help us understand and architect the solutions. I do see a lot of room for improvement there, because the solution and the documentation are not very intuitive. There's a lot that could be done there. It's not like you're installing one product, it's a number of products that you have to install and configure. And there are always chances of failure. There's a lot of room for improvement.

From when we bought the product to when we took the first product live, it took us about four months. But after the infrastructure was set up it was much easier.

A lot of the third-party service providers did not have knowledge of this product. We use Accenture as our core SME but they did not have knowledge of, or skillsets in, this product. We had to work with the vendor, hire their Professional Services to do the architecture, do the installation, and to train our engineers on the solution. There was a lot of learning curve there and we spent a lot of time and money with SEEBURGER Professional Services to get to that point.

We have seen return of investment in terms of how quickly we can deliver.

It has a very goofy pricing model in the sense that they have so many components and it's not very clear what components you require to do your work. When you ask for that, you learn that there's a surcharge for them. It's not that you buy a product and you can use all the compatibilities. They have all these different bits and pieces of it and you have to pay extra for all those things.

We did a big PoC. We narrowed it down to three or four vendors and we invited all of them to come on site and demonstrate their products. We gave them a use-case scenario to implement and, based on that, we made our selection.

The only advice I would give is to see that the industry is moving towards the cloud and this solution is an on-prem solution. The vendor does not have a cloud offering, at least not that we're aware of. So evaluate a solution based on your needs.

Right now, we are deployed on-premise and we are migrating it into the cloud.

The product is being used quite a bit and it's meeting all of our needs for file transfers at this point. We are not expecting to increase usage at this point in time. We are looking to the vendor for the cloud migration and, as part of that, we may have to add more cores. The cloud architecture is different than our on-prem architecture so we may have to make architectural adjustments to allow "five nines," and that might force us to buy some additional licensing.

We do not use Landscape Manager, we only use the base solution, the Business Integration Suite. We mostly focus on the Manage File Transfer part.

We do not have any business users using the solution, it is an IT solution. We do have support teams that are the users of the solution and they're supporting and monitoring the processes. We also have a number of software engineers who are configuring processes to take the files and move the files. There are about ten people who provide support for these things, so they have access to it, along with our system administrators and engineers.

Our system administrator is responsible for running the system, upkeep, and making sure that the servers are patched and everything is working. We have a couple of engineers or developers who are using it. Right now, we are turning around about five to eight projects in a month. The developers work on some of these configurations and provide testing. It's a very small staff.

I give the solution a seven out of ten because it's a very robust product and it works well, but architecture-wise it's complicated.

Our primary use case is EDI: commercial messages such as purchase orders from the customer. We send invoices, credit memos, and we also have a small amount of purchase orders going out to our suppliers and their responses come back in. It's B2B. I don't think we're doing anything "wow" or extraordinary. It's quite basic, traditional EDI.

We get a file from our customers such as an XML file, standard ones from GS1, and that's converted to an IDoc which goes into SAP.

There wasn't really an improvement moving to the SEEBURGER cloud solution in the sense that the project was to replace what we had, as is. It's pretty much the same functionality from our point of view. However, some of our customers insist that we trade with them through EDI so we have to have a solution in place.

It does what it says it does, for us. We normally don't have many problems, so it's the reliability. And the message tracking is quite good, where we can go in and see if we have an issue. It's more having a query utility, rather than reporting, per se. We can query if we have issues or if something's wrong. But it's quite basic stuff.

We haven't really found that the solution's unified code base helps with problem resolution. Because it's a code-based system, we don't have much access to the logs or what's happening. So we have to log a ticket with SEEBURGER. We only get a message that something has failed. Sometimes the message is in German and it's very generic, very high-level. That could be improved, to see what's wrong, because often, it can be data-related but we have to open a ticket with SEEBURGER for them to tell us exactly what the issue is.

The error-tracking could be improved. That's a big thing. A customer will tell us they have an issue and we have to find out why it failed, because often it is a data-related issue. Maybe a field is too long or too short. I would like us to be able to be more self-sufficient. But I understand it's a cloud-based solution, so they have to own it. It's a shared system with other customers.

We've had SEEBURGER on-premise for a number of years. It's been about ten years and, in 2017, we moved to the SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) cloud. It's now solely via the cloud model.

It's pretty stable. We haven't had an outage. Once you have the connection up and running, it seems to work. SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) 5 is more stable than our previous version.

We did add in some extra processes and our volume increase doesn't seem to have caused a problem.

We don't have plans to use any of their additional services, like API management or MST invoicing or IoT at the moment because we've now invested in Microsoft Azure, where logic apps give us an integration tool.

Once you get someone assigned, they're reasonably good. It varies. Sometimes you get someone who seems quite junior and you have to explain everything to them, and when they do changes they don't work the first time. And other times you get someone who's really good and they fix the thing very fast.

It was ten years ago, but we were using a solution called Sterling Commerce. We switched because of cost.

When we made the decision to go with SEEBURGER, our key selection criterion was that the company had history, that it was an established company. But they were also involved in developing our solution so we thought it was a bigger risk to go with another supplier.

We recently switched over to the cloud-based version and that process went on for a long while. It seemed like an initial deployment because they had to rework everything. They didn't lift and shift a lot of our mapping which was done in SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS). They rewrote it from scratch because they have this new method where they convert everything to XML and then they convert it to an IDoc. There's some standard process for that, but it seemed to take an awfully long while to move from our on-premise to SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) 5 in the cloud. Elapsed time was about nine to ten months. There were a number of changes in the solution as well.

We found it complex because we did have to involve SEEBURGER's senior management at one of the stages, regarding how they wanted to transition. We did find it frustrating.

Our strategy - and the main reason we went with SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) - was that we would take "as is," and bring that across to SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) 5. That was the plan. From my understanding, they already had mapping for some of our customers, the larger, well-known ones, but it did seem to take an awfully long while to implement our solution.

And then, we did have complexity with the SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) 5 system where it wouldn't work with our VAN here in Ireland So we had to move to AS2. That could have accounted for some of the delay in implementing our project.

We worked directly with SEEBURGER. Our main dealings were with a developer who was doing the mapping and there were some dealings with their technical people who were setting up connections. The latter was pretty straightforward. It was mainly around developing the maps that most of the time was spent. We had one person working with them. He was involved in the initial scoping with SEEBURGER and then in testing the maps and providing feedback.

It's a must-have product for us. What we do with it is quite straightforward so we still have the same number of support staff and we haven't reduced costs. It's not increasing revenue either. It's not a reason why a client would do business with us. They do business with us because of our brand, but it's a must-have for us to be able to do EDI with them.

We pay per message we use. We spend about £19,000 a year with them. If we go over our band we obviously pay extra.

We didn't evaluate other solutions at that time. SEEBURGER came recommended and we went with them. SAP put us in touch with them.

The biggest lesson we've learned throughout our time using it is not only a lesson with SEEBURGER but with all remote vendors, because everything was done remotely. That meant we had to be very clear in communication and in logging issues and tickets with them. And it required a large amount of testing because even though there's the standard format, every customer does something different or has different requirements. We probably underestimated the testing required. Those were the two big lessons for us.

It was quite late in our project that we established that our VAN provider couldn't communicate with SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS). So my advice would be to establish that upfront. Make sure there's a really good ticketing system and any issues are well-documented because the implementation is going to be remote. Also, have a very good estimate of how many messages you process so you can buy the right package or service level from them.

We have simplified how we track errors because at times there will be maybe an issue on the customer because a product is not set up, for example. We batch our invoices, so we would need to find which files need to be resent. We've simplified that, but that's done in our ERP system. The other simplification we did, which was SEEBURGER-related, was that we update the status of our SAP documents which communicate with SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS). That was an improvement for tracking errors because now we just go to SAP to find out the status of an IDoc. We have the status that it was sent, whereas before, we would only know that it was sent to the SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) system. That was an improvement for us.

I don't think SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) has saved us money. We had an on-premise system which was at end-of-life. The service charge replaced the maintenance on that. So it's about the same, maybe a little bit more.

It's good that they're putting effort into R&D, rather than investing in brand awareness, but if we, as a potential customer, are not aware of it, we're not going to look to use it. I'm not overly aware of what SEEBURGER is doing or how they can help us. They have tried to have meetings with us sometimes but we're very busy because we're now in the middle of doing an ERP migration.

I've heard the solution can transfer other documents, like PDFs and marketing documents and that it can do other things besides the standard EDI messages we use. But currently, we have other tools that do that sort of stuff, like Microsoft Azure, etc. I don't think we have any plans to increase our footprint with SEEBURGER at the moment.

We only have two users of the solution because it just works away in the background. It's like a blackbox solution to us. The only time anyone would have reason to go into it is if we had a problem. It doesn't require much maintenance from us. And really, there's not much we can do either. We can just see there's a problem and then log a call.

I would rate the product around a seven out of ten. The product is reliable. We don't have any outages. We do get the messages. Everything is converted. And there is a query tool. It's pretty basic. I would like to see more features. And I would like to be able to do a bit more to troubleshoot, rather than having to log a ticket straight away.

They're quite pleasant people to deal with. It's just getting the resources. They did have a resource issue when we were doing our implementation and there was some restructuring happening at their end.

SEEBURGER BIS monitors our system servers, i.e., the internal and external communications. It monitors that everything works fine. When I need to configure new trading partners, they take care of the customer map. They already have an existing catalog of customers, and I work with them to build a process map. On their end, they build the map for the customer using specific coding, then we do the same in SAP. This is what they monitor. 

It is in the cloud, but hosted by SEEBURGER. They maintain the process via Message Tracking and other applications.

We had a problem. One of our biggest customers in North America, Home Depot, was sending us reports of issues with quantities and pricing. These reports were loaded into SAP, but the business people were not looking at them because SAP is cumbersome and complicated. I raised the situation with my contact at SEEBURGER, and we worked on another type of report. We developed a parallel process, which was their idea, and they provided a new report called Jasper. It converts the transaction into a human readable report and is a parallel process. We send these reports via email to the business people, who do pay attention to them now because they can see the information. They can also react much faster to customer requests.

SEEBURGER BIS is excellent for customer mapping.

SEEBURGER BIS helps us automate processes. When something is manual and we have to fix the data, then it is really complicated. However, when it's automated, we trust it and the process in the system, so we don't have to go back and fix it. For example, we had a problem with a partner sending 17 files every week, but a few times a year, they wouldn't send files during a certain window. We would escalate this with them. Then, when they caught up and sent the files again, they weren't authenticated. We had to fix this situation before it became a nightmare because our financials were impacted. Also, it was really messy. So, I worked with SEEBURGER to have something automated to pick up the files within a certain window and validate them as accurate. If the files come outside of this window, then we have to approve the loading of them.

They are audit compliant. They did their own audit and shared it with me, which was useful. If we need a list of users' accesses, then I can make the request of them. I haven't done an audit of SEEBURGER, but when they do provide me their own reports, that is good enough.

On the technical side, their process is excellent. When we set up a transaction with them, they have a customer map, so we know for sure that we won't have problems. Once it's installed in production, we don't have to go back and change it again. I really love that. If we started supporting the system ourselves, I'm not sure that we would have the same quality of work.

SEEBURGER BIS provides us everything in a unified platform without needing third-party solutions. They are very flexible, providing us things like API solutions. The API will change the industry for EDI. Our other departments already use API, but for us working EDI, this is something new and SEEBURGER is pushing us this information.

The integration is not so excellent. While I'm not saying there is a problem, there is no pattern. When we start a new project, we have to work with new people and processes every time. The technical side of their system is very good, but their change process is not repeatable. It needs to be rebuilt each time.

I have been using the solution for eight years, since 2012.

It has been used in my organization for about 12 years.

The stability is perfect. I sleep well.

The scalability is pretty solid.

I plan to keep working with SEEBURGER as long as I can. When we have an integration, they are there to answer questions and work with us. I don't see any problems if we ever need to increase.

There are approximately 15 business users who connect to the SEEBURGER BIS portal to view transactions. 

The few times that I have had a problem with employees, I escalated the situation and we tried to improve it. When it did not work, they changed the person. 

With the expertise that they developed, they can answer our needs and understand when we have a problem. That is why I feel like when I ask a question, if they don't know, then there is always someone who does know. They have very good expertise.

They have been very reactive to my requests. I wish that they were more proactive when answering though. Maybe they have too many customers?

The initial setup is complex, but for good reason. Of course, I would like to have a simplified process and a customer map that really matches my needs as well as follow their central global team. We have to work with them. That leads to delays and we cannot ask for any changes. It is complex and tedious, but I understand that it is for the good. On the flip side, they are very reliable on the technical end because it's complex at the beginning and they can solve most of the issues.

The deployment time depends on the size of the project. For a simple project, it could take a month to deploy.

At this point, we let SEEBURGER make the decision on upgrades. We don't decide which version we're using, because they support the system. What we're planning to do, because of COVID-19 and internal priorities, is go to iPaaS.

I have a team of two analysts. On their side, I have two points of contact: One person who works on the day-to-day and process side of things and another person who works on the maps.

SEEBURGER installed the latest version.

It saves time by doing things automatically.

I had a problem at one time with their invoicing. I told them, then we worked on the process and improved it. 

They installed the connection between SAP and SEEBURGER BIS in Europe first. This was awhile ago. When I came along, I became involved in the project and started working with them. Every time that I made a request, the work was done well, but I was not receiving my invoices. I knew I had to pay for the work and was trying to find someone to send me the invoices or a report of what was being done. From that end, it was really not working. After a few years, I was complaining and not happy. At the end of the year, they would come with a long list of invoices to pay, which was really bad. So, I asked for a change. We worked on the process, and since five years ago, I have worked with SEEBURGER based in North America. 

Now, when I have a question, I know who to contact. They send me a report with invoices every month. They really reacted to my concern, and we improved the process. Since then, I have had no problem. 

You will sleep well, because it's very reliable. They have good expertise and knowledge for providing solutions. If I need an EDI solution, I recommend going with them. I have mentioned a few issues on invoicing and time to answer back, but these are not such a problem. I'm not going to partner up on a technical solution with someone because they are nice in their emails and fast. I want a good, solid technical solution.

When we have a need, I go to them, and usually they have a solution for us.

I would rate this solution as a nine out of 10.

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