BILLA, hypermarket chain

Situation

1. Huge costs of document generation and storage:
   Due to large amount of suppliers every month BILLA generates and sends huge number of documents supporting business operations. Only on bonuses and on goods return it generates 51 000 documents (on 127 400 paper sheets) including 20 000 invoices. They spend more 120 KRUR on consumables and post. Most part of the documents is stored in BILLA archives and takes a lot of area.
2. Long time to generate and send documents:
   From the moment of generation till receipt by the supplier each document goes through one and the same procedure — it is printed, signed, sealed, sent by post. Sometimes it takes near a month to reach the supplier. Of course, it raises some difficulties in cooperation between partners and sometimes leads to unpleasant problems. For example, retailer calculates bonuses and sends supporting documents by post. And supplier receives documents in a month when it is already late to argue with the conditions stated thereon. 

In order to ret rid of huge amount of paper documents, and make their flow between retailer and supplier more operative and controllable BILLA took a decision to change over to EDI.

Solution

1. SAP adjustment:
   The first try to partially switch document flow into e-form was adjustment of SAP to sending of e-mails containing notification on invoice generation and calculation of bonuses to all the suppliers. This made it possible to inform the suppliers, but not to get rid of documents — it was still necessary to print and send document by post. BILLA was trying to fund some other solution.
2. Diadoc implementation:
   In May, 2011 BILLA together with SKB Kontur started realization of a pilot project on EDI with suppliers via Diadoc.

Switching to e-documents started from documents on bonuses and returns. As BILLA operates on Austrian system transferring documents of a specified format we had some problems with standardization of document loading into Diadoc on initial stage. But Diadoc team solved this problem and developed a special application automatically sending documents to suppliers.

Results

A special developed for BILLA application enables easy and quick preparation of e-document files and sending to supplier. As a result, documents of bonuses and returns are transferred in e-form and cause no inconveniences neither to supplier nor to retailer. 

All costs on document departure are borne by BILLA. Supplier shall only connect to Diadoc. For three month period of Diadoc implementation and testing, BILLA has spent means comparable with monthly costs of paper, boxes, etc. (120 KRUR). Money invested into project was spent on solution development and document sending costs.

At present BILLA together with SKB Kontur is actively working on switching of invoices to e-form.

Comment

«New things always cause fears. Many people think that there is still no practice in e-documents signed by e-signature, that there can be a lot of troubles with auditors and tax inspectors. But it exists! There are almost no companies still carrying paper payment orders into bank. Everybody sends them from the office signed by e-signature. Has anybody had any troubles with tax inspection? No. The same is true for other documents, companies can interchange documents in e-form making their work easier and increasing their efficiency. Due to wide Internet spread and PCs in any office this becomes a reality», — comments Alexandr Gribanovsky, BILLA chief accountant.