JD Edwards Integration Case Study: Electrolux

Leading Household Goods Manufacturer, Electrolux, Need To Integrate JD Edwards

Electrolux is a global leader in household appliances and appliances for professional use, selling more than 40 million products to customers in more than 150 markets every year.

With a culture of passion for innovation, customer obsession and drive for results, the company uses thoughtful design and extensive consumer insight to meet the real needs of consumers and professionals.

Electrolux products include refrigerators, dishwashers, washing machines, vacuum cleaners and cookers sold under esteemed brands such as Electrolux, AEG-Electrolux, Eureka and Frigidaire. Electrolux achieves sales of AUD 15.5 billion and has 55,000 employees worldwide

Achieving Real Time Integration Of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne

In 2003, the Application Integration Manager at Electrolux in Australia, Peter Robins, started to hear about trading partners conducting business with ‘web services’. With the business running on JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and using a sound EDI system for most customers’ orders and invoices, Robins, who is always looking for ways to innovate, turned to Electrolux’s trusted JD Edwards implementation partner Ndevr for more information.

Coincidently, at that time Ndevr had recently finished development of “Ndevr’s Integration Suite for JD Edwards” an integration solution built on an industry-standards platform through which real-time JD Edwards application integration becomes possible.

Ndevr’s Integration Suite was purpose built for organisations looking to integrate other systems and/or web portals with JD Edwards EnterpriseOne – Electrolux’s existing business platform.

Robins said, “Ndevr successfully implemented JD Edwards at Electrolux in 2002, so given our positive history together, when the customer community started to ask about the possibility of web services, I immediately consulted Ndevr. To find out that the Ndevr Integration Suite could plug straight into our existing platform and offer such a high level of functionality, I realised there would be many opportunities to take advantage of this capability not only now but in the future.”

Introducing Ndevr’s Integration Suite For JD Edwards

At Electrolux the Ndevr Integration Suite provides a service-oriented architecture platform and a set of prebuilt web services, which ‘expose’ the existing JD Edwards business functions to any web service enabled product. In this instance, Electrolux chose to enable the ‘Stock Availability’ web service, one of currently 16 different services available in the suite.

The ‘Stock Availability’ web services retrieves the stock availability data from the JD Edwards platform and makes it available to external partners, in this case enabling them to conduct real time inventory enquiries, independent of Electrolux.

Robins commented, “Most importantly, due to the build of the web services in the Ndevr Integration Suite, I could see the system would easily scale and adapt to address future requests from our trading partners, which is incredibly important for us as a company that prides itself on innovation.”

After a smooth implementation, Robins opened the web services up to internal stakeholders, to stellar reviews. “The system functioned so well that we very quickly made it available for customers,” he said. One such trading partner, The Good Guys, embraced it immediately and integrated the web service straight into their own order entry platform.

The Benefits Of Using Ndevr Integration Suite For JD Edwards EnterpriseOne

“The most obvious benefit of the stock availability web service is two pronged. Firstly, we can service our customers needs in a way that suits them, providing the most up to date information without the hassle of picking up the phone to call us and make a stock enquiry; and in parallel, our bottom line is improved by negating that process altogether with the new customer self service model,” explains Robins. Furthermore, the Ndevr Integration Suite web services adhere to Industry Web Service standards (WS-I) enabling the latest in web security and encryption, so all the data is secure.

Because Web Services is mature as a standard, and has pervasive support from industry vendors, this has given Electrolux a high level of flexibility
and simplicity when integrating 3rd party applications into JD Edwards.

For Electrolux’s trading partners like the Good Guys, the web services functions in both .net and Java environments and are also entirely flexible, running on any service-oriented architecture platform and enabling complete mobility as hardware can be scaled up and scaled out.

“The Ndevr Integration Suite has given us the ability to provide leading edge capabilities to our trading partners, giving them more options and essentially making doing business with us easier. Enabling these web services is a big part of how we will be servicing and interacting with our trading partners now and in future,” said Robins.

Enabling Continued Growth

As organisations ride the huge technology wave that is sweeping the world they are demanding more of their trading partners, many of which are becoming increasingly ‘tech savvy’ on the latest ways to do business. The Ndevr Integration Suite will allow Electrolux to continue to meet and service these needs, ensuring it remains a trading partner of choice with its customers.

Robins concludes, “With this system the opportunities and possibilities for innovation are endless. For example in future we could also offer trading partners the capabilities to make orders, receive invoices, or make item
enquiries, all with our existing JD Edwards platform. These are all services that they can currently carry out through other avenues but it’s really about providing these partners with the choice and flexibility that an innovative company like Electrolux requires to stay ahead of the game.”

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