SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite Reviews

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.

Public Cloud

Other

We're primarily using it for communication and translation of our traditional EDI documents. We're an automotive supplier so a big part of our business is automotive related, but we're also using it for synchronous APIs or web services with some of our customers or trading partners.

Of course, not everything we're doing is EDI. We're doing a lot of distribution of unstructured files, even in our company, transactions between systems. With the mapper, we're doing data transformation as well, to integrate back to our back-end ERP system. We're also using the Message Tracking component, which allows us to confirm what's come in and what has processed.

About 90 percent of our global EDI transaction volume is coming in and out of SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS).

We have different application development groups within IT. My area is primarily EDI and integrations, but in some of the other areas, like HR or payroll or shipping, there's a great need to transfer files and data with their trading partners. Those partners could be a bank or an HR company or a payroll company. The folks in our other application areas don't really have any experience with communications and integrations. Where I'm able to improve our organization is that all I need to do is have them tell me, "Hey, I need to get a file or send a file to this trading partner, can you help me?" Then I'm able to work with them and get that set up and tested.

Our other application development folks don't have to spend time worrying about doing that part of the project. I'm something like a middleman and using SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) has decreased the turnaround time on a lot of these projects.

Also, one of the things that SEEBURGER always touts is their ability to do "any to any" formatting. I really didn't understand it when we first got the product, but what I've come to find is it doesn't matter if you want to take a CSV file or an XML file or a flat file or a PDF file or a structured EDI file; you can transform it from one format to another - any to any or even to the same format - which is a really nice feature. We deal with a lot of different databases and structures in our company. We don't have a single system. We used to have a lot of problems trying to integrate our different locations. This has allowed us to seamlessly integrate our different database products together.

One example is that we had a project where we needed to have a consolidated sales history from all of our regions loaded into a third-party product that runs an SQL database. Of course, all our legacy systems are in the iSeries or AS/400. What we were able to do, since they didn't really integrate directly with an SQL database, was to have them generate CSV files and SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) was able to pick them up from their respective host systems, translate them, and load them to the SQL database records. It was quite easy and we didn't have to spend a bunch of money trying to add an Oracle Database or some other database that we really didn't need.

In terms of reaction time since implementing the solution, the connectivity between unlike systems is much easier. It involves less programming. The other thing is that SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) is a JavaScript or a Java-based system within their mapping tool. You can actually write a lot of code in there. We can perform a lot of the translations even within our mapping, whereas we used to have to do custom programming on our back-end systems to fully integrate. Being able to put everything in one place has streamlined the mapping and the integration process. That has saved at least one-third of the time.

The one thing about SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) that we really liked is that it's what I would call "platform independent." Most of our systems back in 2012 were on an AS/400 or iSeries and there were some limitations with that. We really wanted to find a product that could communicate with all platforms.

In addition to that, we really like the AS2 communication adapters, which allow us to not use a VAN and for data to be pushed between trading partners. That's a big feature we really like.

Then, in our landscape, we have a lot of AS/400s or iSeries and SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) has a file service listener that allows data to seamlessly be transferred between the SEEBURGER solution and the AS/400. That was a very big part of it.

There are also a lot of alerting and notifications within it that allow us, even though we have a very small staff, to manage and monitor a very large number of EDI transactions.

One of the biggest features, as well, is the Mapping Designer because that's what we were looking to upgrade in addition to just communication protocols; we wanted to get a more modern mapper that we could use for both EDI documents and other types of unstructured data.

The BIS Front End needs a little bit of refreshing, especially when it comes to setting up new trading partners and trading partner agreements or transactions. It can be a bit clumsy to copy and rename and then go in and modify. That could be improved a little bit.

Also, on the server side, there are a lot of administration and configuration files that you need to go in and do maintenance on. You have to find them in a certain folder so it's very error-prone and it can be a little time consuming unless it's documented. They could pull some of those individual configuration files into the product itself where there's a better user interface for that.

In terms of adding features, they've recently talked about a few. One is a way to manage your web services or your APIs. That would be a big help because, right now, we have four web services and there's quite a lot of setup to each. They're in different areas within SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS). It's my understanding that they're going to be able to pull that together so you can view that entire setup in a more streamlined manner. That's something we're looking forward to.

More than five years.

The stability is good, as long as you have the database sized correctly and your server sized with the right amount of processors. It's been very good for us.

We did run into a situation where at one point we didn't have enough memory on our servers. It became slow and we had some issues there. But once we recognized what the issue was and made a correction, it was resolved quite quickly.

So, it's very stable. Of course, we're really dependent on the Windows environment and SQL Server environment. It's only going to be as stable as those platforms are.

We've had to increase the core processing units in our SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) central instance, maybe twice, and the same with memory and disk storage. We've been able to wait until the need has come and not use up all that extra processing and memory that we didn't need.

There was documentation on how to do it and when to do it but we still used consulting services to have them direct us. We said, "Here's what we're going to do. Is this correct?" and they were able to lead us through anything we needed to do to scale up and pick up more transactions or more disk space.

So, scalability is pretty good. Right now we're only running a central instance of SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS). They allow you to split it up into individual instances. If we wanted to separate the US from Europe we could do that, and allocate different resources to each. That's another area where they're scalable. It's been pretty good for us so far.

Technical support is located in Germany and there are different levels of support you can pay for. Regardless of your support level, you're able to open tickets and, based on the severity of the ticket, they get back to you. They're all very knowledgeable of the system and they know where to pinpoint.

I will say that if the issue is something new to your company, something you haven't done before, they will refer you to consulting services which are billable. They won't do any development or the like for you. But they will troubleshoot problems.

The only thing I'm not crazy about is that, while they all speak English, they have a heavy accent in a lot of cases. Sometimes that can be difficult, depending upon who you're working with. Other than that, we've had no problems with their technical support.

The consulting services we work with, because we're in the Michigan area, are all working out of the Atlanta office. We're always working with them over the phone and through emails, so not onsite. They're are also very knowledgeable and they've come to get familiar with our implementation and how we're using their products. It really cuts down on some of the cost when we have a project because the consultants we're working with are familiar with our company. So, overall support is pretty positive.

In terms of response time, if it's a situation where you're saying you're down, they're supposed to call you within one hour, and in my experience, that's always been the case. We haven't had an experience where they're not getting ahold of us. Beyond that, if it's more of a question or you don't understand something, then it falls into another category and it might be later that day or the next day. That's fine. It's been good.

We have our own technical resources onsite. We have a server group and a firewall group and I'm the EDI application guy. We were used to a lot of the terminology and stuff from the past. With that in mind, I thought the setup was quite straightforward.

They provided us with a hardware-sizing questionnaire, which was really helpful in determining our server requirements. Thinking back - it's been six years - it really seemed to go a lot smoother than it could have gone, especially since it was a brand-new product to us.

Regarding our implementation strategy, what we wanted to do first was move all of our communications with our VANs and our direct trading partners into SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS). That meant we weren't doing the translation and the mapping within the solution, but all of the communications were done through it. What that allowed us to do was to pull all of our trading partners together from Europe and South America and North America into one place and have all the communications flowing through one area. That allowed us to support it a lot more easily and to take advantage of that AS2 protocol.

That was our initial strategy, to do communications, and then follow that up by doing the mapping, one trading partner or one transaction set at a time. And that's what we've done.

With any new product or implementation, usually there's a driving force. One of the things we were asked to do was to implement a web service in Europe that we had no expertise in and we had no platform to run it on. SEEBURGER provided both of those. They showed us how to use SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) and we used their consulting services to assist us with the back-end integration. So, rather than put this web service or API in another place which would eventually have to be moved to a central location, we were able to incorporate it right into the SEEBURGER product.

Our first phase with communication for all of North America only took three months from the time they loaded it onto the system initially until we were cut over. And then, to pick up Europe, we didn't want to do everything at once. We worked on Europe after that and that was another three months. So, within six months we had our communications moved over and we were then moving onto the other phases.

When we deployed, we had one SEEBURGER consultant who was dedicated to us for that first three-month period. Then we had another one who came in and did some training and some of the planning with us. As far as our own internal resources go, there were three of us who identified all the trading partners and all the nuances of what needed to be set up and tested in the new system. All in all, it was about like three internal people and two SEEBURGER people.

We worked with SEEBURGER employees.

We've had some ROI. I'm not going to be able to give you any dollar numbers, but as far as headcount in my group goes, we used to have four or five people and now it's just me and one other. We're supporting the same number, and more, of trading partners than we used to. Right off the bat, that's a good savings.

All the new adapters are individually priced, which is good. You don't buy the whole system and then, if you don't use it it just sits there. You only buy the stuff you want, which is good. There are some components that are either new or that we didn't need at the time of implementation, so we added them later, or we have plans to add them in the future.

Sometimes it seems a little pricey, especially when some of the stuff is available through freeware, like SFTP communications. You can download a free copy of something and perform those type of functions. But we understand, as an IT group, that those are not long-term solutions that you want in your core processes. It costs a lot more money to buy this stuff from SEEBURGER but I think it's worth it in the long run.

Everything seems expensive to me, so I'm neutral on the pricing and the licensing.

We wanted to be platform-independent from our iSeries and AS/400, and we wanted a more modern product for our EDI integrations. We looked at SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) vs IBM Sterling B2B Integrator. We did a lot of demos and had a lot of conversations between the two. Ultimately, we ended up choosing SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS), but those were the two primary vendors that we were evaluating.

The Sterling Integrator was a little bit more complex than it needed to be. It wasn't straightforward. The mapper was a little bit, I won't say clumsy, but it was a little bit busy, hard to understand. One of the big things we wanted to do was to have a new refresh mapper. Also, the pricing seemed to be a lot higher for what we were getting.

Based on the demos that we had - we had given a script of what we wanted to see from both companies - the way SEEBURGER presented it was much more straightforward and understandable. We could see ourselves moving to that product a lot easier than moving to the Sterling Integrator.

If you are looking to implement SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS), talk to other companies that are already using it, some that are in the same industry. That would help you feel more comfortable with what it is you're getting into, and maybe open your eyes to some of the technical capabilities that the solution has that you really hadn't even thought about yet or which weren't presented to you in the sales pitch.

I would also advise doing a lot of planning, because some of the initial setup, design, and planning you do at the onset is hard to change down the road. Take some extra time when you're figuring out how you're going to set up your trading partners, what the naming conventions are, and things of that nature. It'll make it easier.

We've established a pretty good working relationship with our sales contact, and this has been important for us. If we want to have a demo of one of their new products, we're comfortable going to them and saying, "Hey, can you tell me more about this? Hey, can you do a WebEx session to show us how this works?" It's been helpful for us to maintain those relationships.

Obviously, with any new software, training is also something. Don't skimp on that. We did it in phases. We got training on the BIS Front End itself first, and then, when we were ready to start doing the mapping, we got training on the mapping. Down the road, we took some more advanced training. We were able to do it in phases, but it's something that you don't want to skip because there are a lot of good capabilities and different ways of doing things that, if you don't know about them, you may be shorting yourself on the solutions that you deliver.

We don't use the landscape manager but that is something we are interested in. I don't know a lot about it but it keeps track of the configuration of all your implementations so when you do an upgrade, it makes it much easier to manage. That's something we're going to be looking at with the new release of SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS).

We don't do clustering. We just have a single instance of SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) so I don't think we're using the Active-Active feature.

There are probably fewer than ten users of the solution in our organization. These are IT folks. They are the ones that really want visibility into the Message Tracking module to view the data that's come in or that went out to confirm that they're receiving the stuff they're looking for. Those transactions aren't with EDI people, they are people to whom we send a payroll file at a bank or a third-party payroll provider. The IT guys may want to monitor it.

Regarding staff required for maintenance, we have five people who are using the BIS Front End and the Mapping Designer. All five of us perform the daily monitoring activities and the trading-partner setup. We have it separated right now. We have three users in Europe and they're able to manage their own customers and suppliers. We do the same in North America. Two of us are doing the regular mapping tasks, while two of the others are occasional mappers. And one person is more of an administrator.

We have plans to continue utilizing SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) and to use it for more non-EDI types of activity, such as payroll, banking, HR, different sales systems, warehouse management systems, and integration between ERP systems. There is seemingly an endless number of integration projects. In addition to that, we've begun to do a lot of the web services or the APIs, even within our ERP system. So our EDI transaction activity may be staying the same, but we're using SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) for a lot more of the non-EDI integration and data transformation stuff; not the typical automotive training partners, rather more financial related types of trading partners.

Overall I would rate the solution a nine out of ten, which is really high. I have been really happy with it. Of all the projects where people have come to me, I can't remember having to say, "No, we can't do that." We're able to deliver what I have been advertising since 2012, so it's meeting our needs. Most of the issues we've had have really been things that we've done to ourselves. It hasn't been the product or bugs in the software. Support has been pretty good, we've had consulting services that have gotten to work with us regularly and they know us, so we feel like we're in good shape to tackle some of the newer projects or bigger projects in the future.

The only thing I'm always wanting is that SEEBURGER doesn't seem to be doing a lot of marketing in the U.S. It's a German company, the founder is in Germany, and most of their development staff is over there. Not as many folks are using SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) in the U.S. They're using IBM and TrustedLink and those type of products. When I talk about SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS), nobody knows what it is. I have to sell the product and what it can do. If SEEBURGER could do some marketing, do some reaching out to management, the executive level, to give them some visibility into this product, it would make my job easier.

While there are a lot of companies in the U.S. using SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS), we don't have a network or a users group. SEEBURGER has offered some sessions in the past, where you could go to Atlanta and they would give you a three-day update on new things they're doing, but there's no forum for users, other than on Facebook. There isn't really a users group that I know of where we could get together and do things, have conferences, etc.

This is just to transfer files securely within the Mylan network, and a few instances from the outside too. It is just to transfer files. Like a postman, it moves the files between the systems with no data transformation

We have the on-premise solution and are only using one feature of this product. Most of our solutions are on-premise, as our security team prefers it that way.

It used to take half an hour to move one file from one location to another. Now, it takes 10 minutes. 

We did not procure this software as a reason to improve our organization. We procured this software to replace the existing one.

We have found this tool useful.

The solution is flexible when it comes to adding integrations. It is much easier to use than the other tools we have to move the files. Across the board, we can move files in a short amount of time compared to our other existing tools.

Less than one year.

It is stable. We haven't faced any major issues since the implementation of this software.

From what I understand, scalability is much easier. However, we haven't increased our volumes or interfaces. We are still only using 20 to 30 percent. We are far away from any increase or decrease of the system sizes.

Our users are mostly the technical team. We have five to seven people using the system. It is the technical team only, not the end-users, and most of them are IT engineers.

We have more than 300 interfaces in this platform.

We have only requested technical support a couple of times. We haven't faced any issues with them. They are very good.

We procured this software to replace webMethods. 

The initial setup is not the straightforward. It took couple of months for us to set up.

We had planned to do it in a month and migrate all the file transfer interfaces into this new platform, but it took us two months for installation, then another two months to move the interfaces. It may not be a software issue, because there are so many other factors, e.g., resources, dealing with partners, etc.

We accepted the help of the SEEBURGER team, making it a typical software setup and installation process.

We have seen ROI.

The pricing and licensing is very competitive.

We evaluated SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) and a couple of other tools. We found SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) to be better suited for our organization.

The Active-Active helps handle larger loads without time delays.

Our reaction time has changed by 50% since implementing this solution.

There are so many moving components. Even if it is on-premise, some servers need to be on the DMZ and some need to be inside of the firewall, so working with SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) made it easier.

We use the product to process for our EDI/B2B platform. It supports various transaction formats including X12, EDIFACT, cXML and xCBL. We also use the product to handle various communication protocols, including AS2, FTP, HTTP and PGP encryption.

The product has the ability to handle high volumes of data efficiently. The front-end has provided us the ability to see issues quickly and is enabled for quick and easy remediation.

• It's hard to single out a single feature. The product has some wonderful aspects to it.
• Mapping Designer provides excellent flexibility.
• BIS front-end provides high visibility.
• IDoc Connector provides seamless connection to our SAP system.

The ability to bind a mapping to an agreement seems a bit clunky. It would be nice to have a better way of navigating to a map name rather than using a drop down list.

More than five years.

It is very stable. It has 99.9 percent uptime.

It is highly scalable.

Technical support has been varied through the years. As SEEBURGER has grown, they have made changes to the tech support area which can be challenging at times. There is room for improvement here, but SEEBURGER is moving in the right direction.

We used the TrustedLink Enterprise (TLE) solution. We switched because the product did not provide all the features that we needed to grow our eCommerce platform. The SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) was one of a few which provided translation for various formats, communications, and integration into SAP, all under one hood.

The initial set up was done by SEEBURGER consulting. It can be complex due to various factors, such as server settings, database settings, and security settings. 

Having the SEEBURGER consulting team perform the installation alleviates a lot of headaches and ensures a stable system.

We have seen ROI.

The cost of the SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) can be considered high. We have elected to have SEEBURGER consulting do the installation. Licensing could also be considered high. However, one would be hard pressed to find another product that does all that this one does.

We evaluated the Gentran's AI (Application Integrator).

Overall, its an excellent product. I would highly recommend it.

We use the solution to tap and transform traffic. 

The tool's performance doesn't get affected by transformation loads. You can write any number of rules, filtering criteria, transformations, etc. 

SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite does not have an end user or subscriber console which can show the traffic status. You have to be reliant on the consultants to do the customization. 

I have been working with the product for three and a half years. 

SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite is scalable. 

The tool's installation was easy. 

I would rate SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite a nine out of ten. 

On-premises

Our primary use case for it is as an integration tool. We've got lots of systems. We are a service company in warehousing and transport and we've got a lot of customers. We are a 3PL company so we do transport for a lot of the big retailers. All of this has to be integrated. We've got small applications running everywhere, so any data which flows through from one application to another requires SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS).

Warehousing is our major function. We get orders from our clients, retailers that you know. Some of them use EDI, some use API, and some use web services. They come through our system and they get formatted into our standard warehouse management system, which is Manhattan. Order information has to be formatted in the Manhattan XML format.

On the transport side, there are different applications. We have Freighter which does the load planning and then there is route planning which is a separate application hosted by Paragon. The route planning information goes from the orders which we received to the Paragon system, and the orders also go to Freighter for load planning.

In addition, there is information from the warehouse system that has to go back to our big retail customers, such as stock received, dispatch confirmation, receipt confirmation, and any stock adjustments. There are different types of interfaces which go back and forth between our customers and our warehouse management systems.

There is some B-to-B integration and then we have application-to-application as well. For example, the warehouse management system might talk directly to the transport system, which is web-service or API-driven. Sometimes they can't do it themselves, so SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) will step in to capture the data from the warehouse management system. It will do the API service to communicate with another system and get the results and push them. So it acts as a gateway for everything coming in and out of our company, a secure gateway.

Many of our customers still use file transfer, so we use SFTP a lot. Most of the interfaces are migrating to web services, SOAP or API. Those are the latest but we still have a lot of SFTP used.

It is hosted by us, internally.

It helps in communications. It's the only gateway between our client systems and any internally-hosted or cloud-hosted systems. SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) acts as an interface between them. It provides a lot of benefits to our customers. If SEEBURGER were to go down, our company would be in limbo.

It's a very vital system. We are dependent on it because we have hundreds of major customers, all of which are big retailers. Without SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS), their orders and other communications may not go to the warehouse. There might be manual processes but that would be very hard.

It's been a good tool so far. It's helped us do things which we were not able to do. Most applications nowadays are third-party applications which require data in particular formats and there are restrictions on them. We can't modify third-party applications. The best we can do is use SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) to massage or reformat the data from one format to another and say, "Okay, if you want it this way you will get it this way."

That's what SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) has been good at: communicating between two applications, changing formats and using the required protocols. Some might have applications which are very old and they can't do more than FTP or SFTP. With SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) we've got that flexibility. We can have one site communicating in an old FTP or SFTP style, or via file transfer. And with other applications, we could have API or a web service call or some other protocol used to send information. SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) acts as an intermediary between them.

We wanted to use API. We were told that in 6.52 we could use API management. Later on, we found that API management wasn't that completely integrated into the 6.52 solution, and if you wanted to have the whole API suite you might have to go to 6.7, the latest one.

We are waiting for that. There is talk that next year we might try to migrate to 6.7. Migration is not an issue on our side, but it's the customer migration which takes a lot of time. That involves a lot of concern and hard work because we have to have the customers onboarded as well and they need to do some testing. It's always really hard to get the customers to find time for that.

We started using it in 2009.

It has been quite stable. We haven't had any issues after getting the system up and running. It has run very well. Maintenance is also very good and support is also okay. They've got a lot of screens and other things which help. There are proactive error notifications so we can see what's happening. It has a nice front-end screen which monitors all the adapters. If there are any issues on anything, we can see them on one screen. 

We never have problems, as such, with SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS), but we had issues which were related to the network or the machine or the database not working, getting full, or going down. But as far as the software is concerned, we haven't had any major issues. We have had minor issues which were immediately looked at and rectified by SEEBURGER.

We have a DR system for SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS). It's all saved if something goes wrong. We have multiple data centers so it's not been an issue. We have never had any major downtime.

The scalability depends on the price - which suite you're getting. At the moment, the version we are on, which is 6.52, is quite scalable because it has one adapter engine. 

Their architecture includes an admin server and an adapter server so you can just add more servers by adding licenses to it. If we want to scale up, we just a few more adapter engines into it; it's just adding a virtual server and more functions to it. It's not a big issue. Its scalability is very good at the moment. The software installation is not a big issue. So once you install it, you can just attach it to the existing architecture.

We have a lot of end-users sending files: FTP, SFTP, web services, or HTTP; and there are other services like AS2. We have about 75 to 80 customers and they interact with us with a file or data transfer.

It is our preferred tool at the moment. It's part of our strategy. I don't know about the future, but currently it is the only tool that we are using for interfacing with our various systems. We are still hoping to host most of the system. Most systems are migrating to the cloud, so we don't know yet. There it would an application-to-application connection, so maybe the SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) role might be reduced, but currently it's used a lot.

One thing we need is more support. Sometimes we get stuck on the support because they've not got not many experienced people in the UK for the suite. We have modified SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) a lot to fit our organization. We have customized it. Sometimes we find it hard to get support from their side. Most of the time their help has been good from Germany because that's what they are based. They do help but we struggled before, at times.

The second-tier is needed if there is any problem where consultation is needed to go in-depth and see what the issue might be. We lack some good help from the other side on that level.

We had an issue where the customer wanted specific things and we couldn't do it.

We were using IBM Mercator which they now call WebSphere. The move to SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) started because at that time the company wanted to check into systems which could support new interfaces. The system we had was an old system, so we needed to upgrade it. It was a choice the business had to go through but I wasn't involved in the team that handled the selection.

The setup is complex but we get the SEEBURGER implementers to come out, the consultants who do it the first time, whenever we have a major upgrade. Recently, we have tried to do all the service packs ourselves, but if there is a major upgrade - and most probably when we migrate to 6.7 - we require some consulting time from SEEBURGER because there might be a major change in the way some of the interfaces or communication might be working. That might be when we require a lot of consulting time from SEEBURGER, to understand the product and what features it has and what capabilities we can use.

Major upgrades are as demanding as an initial deployment, but if it's just a service pack, it's okay now. They have made it much simpler. Because we are on Active-Active, we can do patching while the service is still running.

Our initial deployment, back in 2009, took about two days. The software deployment only takes a day or so. But we also had to get all the hardware, the machines, and network service. Those took time. But the software deployment and configuration took just a day-and-a-half.

For that deployment, SEEBURGER people did not just do the deployment, they also worked on initial interface development for us. There were new mapping tools and we didn't have any experience with it, so they did that also. We had a contract with them for three months or so to have them do a lot of work for us. They had two or three consultants who basically converted a lot of the old IBM maps into the new SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS)-format maps.

At that time it was a big project because after installation they had to do the maps etc. Everything had been in IBM until that time. They had to replicate that into SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS).

Now that we have more experience and good resources on our side, we do it ourselves. But at that time it took a total of six months, of which three months were for the initial consulting where we had two or three consultants. After that, it was only one consultant.

At that time it was a new thing for us so we were not in a rush. We installed and tested everything and we migrated one customer at a time. We had an old, IBM-based integration tool. The installation was done as a "blank canvas," and then we migrated our customers.

For a major upgrade, we set aside a period of seven days because we've got quite a few systems: a development system, a test system, a UAT or business integration system, and the production system. We go by step-by-step, so the whole process will take a week. On the first day, we'll do the development system and let it run for two days. Then we will upgrade the test system and let it run for two days to see if there are any issues. Then we will go to UAT, and after two days or so, the production system, which might be on a Sunday. It's an issue of timing because we have to get our change-control times allocated, especially when doing an upgrade to the production system.

We generally work with SEEBURGER. Once, when we had a lot of work to do, we did use a Polish company. I don't remember their name. We used them for a short period.

Finding SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) expertise is very hard. There isn't much SEEBURGER expertise in the UK. I don't think many major organizations are using it in the UK. I know they have very big customers in the US and Germany.

It's very hard to quantify ROI basically because we don't see the financial aspect it. Our job is to ensure that it is running and that we get the output and whatever is needed from it. But financially, if it was down, the impact might be humongous for our company.

The cost-based model is slightly different now in SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS). They changed the licensing, based on adapters and other things. In the old style of licensing, the whole suite was one license, if I'm not mistaken. 

There is the license and then a run-cost.

But that's handled by my team leaders. I'm not into it involved in the cost and related issues.

They went through the selection process to see what interfacing applications were available in the market.

My advice would depend on the purpose you're considering SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) for. If you are going to use it like we are using it, I would say it is a really good tool. If you have restrictions where you can't change the applications you have - you host a lot of third-party applications and you need to integrate the data between each of those applications, then SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) is one of the best tools available. There are other tools, but this one is one of the best.

We may look to use the solution’s additional services such as its MFT (managed file transfer).

We have three integration specialists and one team leader for maintenance of the solution. We also have a design lead but he's not entirely dedicated to SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS); he does design for other things as well.

We have seen version 6.7 and we want to migrate but we have not because migration is a big task for us. It might take some time.

We use SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) as a service. While we were not really using their software, we might be using their software internally to provide a service. Effectively, we're using them as an integration partner.

We use SEEBURGER BIS for electronic data transmissions (EDI). It does a lot of work on our behalf in terms of the mapping and on some of the integrations which are required between us and third-parties. 

We have an integrated ERP system which talks directly to the SEEBURGER systems. Therefore, we don't necessarily have any manual interaction since this is a completely automated system which talks to the SEEBURGER back-end systems.

What would have been a manual process of transmitting data items around between us and third-parties has been automated. SEEBURGER BIS handles the automation and mapping side of the communications. The automation, along with the efficiency around time and cost, has improved our organization. Around 20,000 messages a month have been automated. These typically would be financial/order transactions and confirmations in invoicing that have been automated.

The automation is the most valuable feature. We have full EDI automation through SEEBURGER BIS, which has been the biggest win for us. It removes the complexity and makes the process straightforward.

We have additional ad hoc development costs, but those vary depending on if we're bringing on another third-party into our systems via the EDI integration. So, that's highly variable.

The speed of development needs improvement. If you acquire any customization, it can be a slightly slow process. I would like to see more flexibility around customizations. The time frame right now depends on the sophistication and customization, but we have to go through a process of getting them to develop, implement, and test it. This might take a couple of weeks. If it was a simpler system to customize, the time could probably be cut by half or down by even 25 percent of what it would normally take.

The organization has been using SEEBURGER for four to five years now. I have been using it for two years.

The stability is pretty good. It is rare that we have any stability issues.

The performance and operating efficiency are pretty good. We don't have any major issues in terms of operating efficiency, uptime, any failed transactions. If we do, they are generally not on SEEBURGER's end. They are usually on the other party's end. The service is pretty reliable.

We have about three people (an ICP analyst and two business analysts) who work on SEEBURGER BIS, but they don't work on it full-time.

We haven't encountered any scalability issues. Whenever we've added more components in or increased the volume of transactions, we have not had any issues.

There are about 30 organizations to whom we are connected via the SEEBURGER infrastructure.

We use it everyday, which will probably only increase. We don't have any concrete plans because this is dependent on our third-party customers, as well, and whether they have the infrastructures to support this type of development work. If they don't, then we won't. If they do, then we would. It also depends on return on investment. Some customers are more important than others.

We have had no problems with tech support. Their response time and knowledge of issues is good.

We were not previously using another solution. 

When SEEBURGER BIS came onboard, we changed our ERP systems so they were pretty much in parallel with that.

The initial setup was before my time.

People who worked on the initial setup told me that the initial setup was pretty slick.

We deal with SEEBURGER directly and they tend to do the development work on their systems for us. For recurring development work, they will do that on our behalf.

There are some third-parties involved who tend to be geographic specific and use different EDI formats. We are required in some cases when dealing with other parts of the world for EDI to go through a separate bureau. There's little we can do about that since it is just a data exchange format.

ROI comes back to automation. We are releasing people within our own organization to go and do more high value work. This is difficult to quantify for third-parties. Overall, it's an efficiency gain, which is the main driver behind return on investment.

The ROI for this is a very subjective thing to measure. We do have our own model for how we measure return on investment around things, like EDI transactions. However, it is not so simple model as providing a hard number.

Our licensing model is based on transactions. We have a base service contract which is priced against a volume of transactions and another volume of individual transactions, which are covered by one service agreement. Then, we have development services on top of that. Our annual spend is around £80,000. It's about mid-priced, as there are some cheaper alternatives out there and some more expensive ones. It's neither cheap nor expensive. It's somewhere in the middle.

Do your technical homework carefully to ensure that it's the right solution for you, because all solutions are slightly different in various different ways. It depends on your own back office systems and how your communications would work. Do your due diligence on technical requirements.

The biggest requirement that we have is resilience and robustness of the systems. If they fail for any reason, there is a monetary cost to us. The biggest lesson that we have learned: If you partner closely with them, maintain the stability. If there are any issues, understand what those issues will be before they occur and before they would be able to potentially cause any problems. The reliability, resilience, and robustness of SEEBURGER's services are the most important things.

We have had good service and uptime, generally. The resilience is pretty good. We have not experienced any problems.

SEEBURGER is established. They have a long standing presence within the market. They appear to have been there for a considerable period of time. If we had to change our systems, that would be a big upheaval in terms of the amount of work and testing that we would have to do. It's not something that we want. We would be unlikely to partner with a company if we felt that their future was uncertain.

I think it is a good thing that SEEBURGER invests a high proportion of revenue into R&D rather than promoting brand awareness. Some companies have a huge marketing spend compared with their R&D. If they can support it, then great. For SEEBURGER, the R&D is important because they need to be resilient and responsive. They need to be delivering what their services should be providing. It is crucial for us that the R&D spend continues to be sufficient.

We have no plans to expand into their API management, MFT, eInvoicing, or IIoT services at the moment.