By integrating disparate cloud apps with APIs and automation tools, the firm is reducing costs and improving employee and customer satisfaction
Since its founding in 1836, Ensign-Bickford Industries (EBI) has gradually expanded the company’s market presence to include the aerospace, defense, pet food, and agricultural science sectors.
To manage unprecedented growth, connect international sites, support global operations, and automate critical business processes, EBI was constantly refining its enterprise resource planning (ERP) strategies.
Recently, the firm’s latest digital transformation plans included automating the payroll process, modernizing its manufacturing execution system (MES) to support shop floor operations, and automating the formerly manual task of delivering travel and expense (T&E) data to its ERP system. For the latter project, EBI was using legacy processes that loaded T&E data only once per month, rather than the needed daily load that would allow business units to track financial activity throughout the month.
The monthly manual process was time consuming and had many potential points of failure, ultimately consuming over 100 hours of manual work annually. By partnering with a business integration and automation firm, EBI was able to tap into REST APIs to retrieve daily T&E data from their back end, streamlining the process for other business units to load various data types.
Since implementing the transformations, EBI has achieved cost savings, enhanced productivity, improved work-life balance, and increased customer satisfaction. The T&E integration eliminated 75% of potential failure points, reducing time spent on troubleshooting. The integration further minimized manual work by 95% and eliminated 100% of manual effort required for T&E retrieval. Integrating their human resource management platform with their payroll back end has greatly reduced the potential for errors and the number of labor hours needed. Similar metrics are expected for EBI’s other efforts to automate and improve business processes.
Said the firm’s CIO, Brendan Kehoe: “We’ve been able to connect core systems and automate workflows to drive operational efficiency in areas like manufacturing, finance, and human resources, helping us to reduce costs and improve the experience across employees and customers. Now, we are set up to continue our growth and expansion with businesses that share our core set of values.”
According to Josh Rutberg, Chief Customer Success Officer, Boomi, the integration platform-as-a-Service chosen by EBI: “With today’s rapid pace of technology and constant market evolution, legacy practices just don’t cut it anymore. To keep pace, integration and automation are key… for a solid foundation for integrations, and ultimately (freeing) up employees for more valuable, business-critical work.”
