Retractable Streamlines EDI O
Retractable Technologies designs, develops, manufactures, and markets safety needle devices for the healthcare industry. The Company’s VanishPoint® and EasyPoint® products: syringes, blood collection and infusion devices utilize innovative, patented automated retraction mechanisms. Retractable’s products are designed specifically to protect people by preventing needlestick injuries, cross-contamination from reuse, and reduce disposal and other associated costs. In recent years they have worked with the U.S. government and have provided low dead space syringes for the COVID vaccines.
GraceBlood provides EDI and integration solutions to supply chain organizations to proactively and cooperatively manage their daily business transactions with customers, suppliers and third parties. Their clients, associates and GraceBlood themselves profit from their clients’ ability to strategically embrace B2B electronic transactions and to enthusiastically say “Yes!” when presented with new challenges in their trading partner relationships.
Executive Summary
Retractable’s rapid growth coupled with a global pandemic exponentially increased the demand for safety syringes. Meeting the increased national and global needs created the opportunity for Retractable to examine all aspects of their operations. Their expansion of capacity, productivity and the need to utilize the latest technologies to interface with their supply chain partners and customers became of paramount importance, specifically EDI onboarding and visibility. Implementing a cutting edge platform like GraceBlood’s VelociLink™ Cloud EDI and Analytics turned out to be a very worthwhile investment that would enhance efficiency.
The Challenges
Many of Retractable’s trading partners did not include addresses on their EDI documents, so they found it necessary to hunt them down in their ERP system using the EDI allocation codes they were provided. It was not an efficient process.
Occasionally, Retractable would receive a code from a customer that was unidentifiable, which forced them to contact their EDI service provider and ask for the flat file from their archives. That became a burdensome process that slowed down their EDI operations and ultimately, overall productivity.
How VelociLink™ Helped
After struggling with their previous EDI provider and experiencing excruciatingly long issue resolution times, Retractable decided a new course with GraceBlood’s fully managed cloud EDI solution.
With around a dozen trading partners, it was imperative that they find one that would empower them to track down EDI files on their own.
“GraceBlood was instrumental in introducing us to the potential advantages in utilizing the VelociLink™ Analytics platform,” said Robert Moore, Oracle Applications System Admin for Retractable. “Once we learned more about VelociLink™ Analytics, we signed up for a free trial.”
During the trial period, Retractable’s order management team had the opportunity to get some hands-on experience. After they discovered just how helpful it could be for them on a daily basis, the decision was simple.
The team loved VelociLink™ Analytics, and we saw that it made good sense to incorporate it as a permanent part of our operation.
Results
Retractable finds VelociLink™’s search capabilities especially useful for tracking down old transactions and archived files. They also find the “Timeline” feature to be crucial for the day-to-day visibility into their orders. “Timeline is perfect for confirming the sent and received documents, especially invoices,” said Moore. “It’s also great for knowing when a purchase order acknowledgment comes through and when we need to split an order.”
Retractable’s order management team is now saving hours of time each day. It has empowered them to create a culture of self-service around their EDI data and with their trading partners. “The self-service aspect is really remarkable,” said Moore. “To think that if everyone who deals with EDI on a daily basis had this tool, you would never need to reach out to your trading partners or support team. It makes what was previously machine-readable into easy to understand, human-readable information.”
It’s great to know that there is a solution like VelociLink™. It’s ideal for helping us accomplish everyday tasks efficiently. It’s a perfect bridge between the business and your IT department.”