Santa Maria start reaping the benefits of loosely coupled integration

In 2010, fast growing spice company Santa Maria started using iCore Integration Suite (iCIS) for B2B/EDI and system integration. Already at this stage, Santa Maria decided to adopt a SOA strategy with loosely coupled components that would enable reuse when extending the solution. Today, Santa Maria start reaping the benefits of a wisely designed integration architecture.

The business solutions have been designed with iCIS as integration platform, through which information flows are routed in a loosely coupled way. To get a well-designed architecture, iCore Solutions have been acting as mentors as well as technical solution providers.

Earlier integrations comprise

  • A Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) solution
  • A Danske bank payment solution towards suppliers
  • A third party logistics (3PL) service toward 3PL providers
  • A B2B/EDI solution (old solution in Amtrix was exchanged)
  • A Product Development Management System (PDMS) solution

All solutions have been integrated with the ERP system M3/Movex, which in the future will be exchanged with Dynamics AX 2012.

 "In the later projects we have started to see the real advantages of a loosely coupled architecture", says Maria Reis, IT Manager at Santa Maria. Now, we can reuse a large part of the integration components that were created in previous projects, which will save both time and money. Besides, with this architecture we can make changes without affecting the production environment."

The next step is a pilot project for integration between the new ERP system Dynamics AX 2012 and the warehouse in Kungsbacka, Sweden. The warehouse will be seen as a 3PL provider, with certain additions, such as customer and supplier data, item information and quality control. This integration will reuse major parts of earlier made 3PL specifications and solutions and item info from the PDMS solution. This means that a substantial part of the integration design is already completed. The pilot project will be performed in cooperation with iCore's integration partners iStone.

In the future, when Dynamics AX 2012 is rolled out in the whole organisation, major parts of the previous solutions can be reused. This includes the additions made in the pilot project for integration between Dynamics AX 2012 and the warehouse in Kungsbacka.

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About Santa Maria
Santa Maria is a major supplier of Spices, Mexican food and International food concepts in Northern Europe. The company has two divisions: Retail (Consumers) and Food Service (Catering). The food service division is market leader in spices and Mexican food in the Scandinavian market, and products are exports across Europe.

Santa Maria is a part of the Paulig Group and operates in all European countries. We have more than 450 highly skilled employees and produce our products in four modern factories in Northern Europe. Santa Maria is certified in accordance with BRC higher level standard and use HACCP in all our processes.

Our vision is to become the leading Mexican food company in Europe as well as the leading company in Northern Europe within international food and spices for both retail and food service business.

www.santamariaworld.com