How one of Australia’s largest food logistics companies used Integration to automate it’s supply chain
We work with one of Australia’s oldest food logistics companies founded in 1946, Teys, based right here in Queensland. Teys are one of the largest suppliers of meat, feeding the mouths of millions of people country-wide and shipping internationally.
We were tasked with providing a methodology and platform to execute a multi-year digital transformation program consisting of digital enablement, CRM replacement, EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) implementation, logistics enablement and application migration. This long standing, family run company wanted to modernise and automate their supply chain process that had been in place for decades, to increase efficiencies. IntegrationWorks was contracted to completely re-architect and digitise its end-to-end production process from customer order through to delivery.
The business challenge & opportunity:
As you’d imagine with a company that’s been around this long, there were many steps involved to enable this digital transformation program. Our client required an Integration strategy and platform to replace and modernise their core systems connectivity, which consisted of a range of different ETL, batch, and manual point to point connections. The opportunity for IntegrationWorks was to re-architect these connections to modern protocols (e.g. RESTful APIs and Web Services) and provide architectural reuse, delivery automation; and operational management and visibility.
The Solution:
We love when our clients are local. Having a localised approach to a highly detailed Integration project brings a human touch to a technically heavy strategic execution. We were able to work closely with the client to understand their existing processes in order to re-architect an evolved data-driven process built and enhanced by API technology.
We approached the project with an agile-first mindset and after the requirements of the client were gathered, we identified the best possible technologies to meet the client’s supply-chain needs.
The first phase was to implement WS02, an Open Source ESB. Once this was complete we focused on the re-architecting of the process design, which included four core business processes – ordering, sales, production and invoicing. Each business process came from a different producer protocol and application (XML, Edifact), and had to be mapped to JSON for further processing.
Once completing the design phase, we then developed and tested every component of the process, ensuring that automation and SLA’s could be met consistently. Utility functions like logging and error handling were developed in parallel to meet the requirements of the extensive testing framework.
The Outcome:
All aspects of the process were tested, allowing the service to run and users to begin acceptance testing. We then released the Integration interface into the Production environment. Continuous delivery was made possible with the upgraded Integration interface and redefined methodology, ensuring customers would be satisfied and staff could manage the process effectively.
Finally, we were able to transition the service into Operations, and platform, application, incident and problem management were all aligned to predefined SLAs.
The business outcome meant that the food production process could be completely streamlined and automated to ensure an end-to-end supply chain, enabling the logistics company to take a huge step forward in their digital transformation journey.
97% of businesses are undergoing, or planning to undergo, digital transformation, and yet 84% of IT leaders say integration challenges are holding them back.Traditional integration must be replaced by a tailored integration strategy that allows organisations to cut complexity and drive tangible business value by increasing automation, ensuring tighter security and creating competitive advantages in their industry.
API-led Integration Strategy combats this challenge and connects an increasing number of technologies together with a set of standardised, reusable API services. Services created for reuse dramatically decrease development time, enabling a shorter time to market and decreasing project and operational costs.
We employ the best in integration Architecture experts and DevOps teams who believe connected technology is fundamental to high performing organisations. Paired with our range of world-class integration platform partners, including AWS, Azure, Kong, GCP, Mulesoft and WS02, our experts work closely with our clients to align emerging technologies with reliable and proven best integration practices.
With offices in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, our teams can help you with:
- Integration Maturity Assessments, Microservices Strategy, API Strategy and Integration Planning;
- Integration and Cloud Technology Selection and Procurement,
- Integration Architecture and Engineering Services to connect Apps, Data, Legacy, IoT, Cloud, On-Premise and Multi-Cloud;
- Integrating for Speed, Scale and Velocity with Automation-First Integration Containerisation & DevOps; and
- Integration Support and Managed Services for future-proofed integration resiliency.
Are you based in NSW? We’re attending the Digital Supply Chain Summit in Sydney on June 14th,, join us here.
Learn more about our services here.