Implementation of Comarch EDI at Kompania Piwowarska ⚐ Comarch

About Kompania Piwowarska

Kompania Piwowarska (KP) operates three breweries with rich heritage: Tyskie Browary Książęce (founded in 1629), Dojlidy Brewery in Białystok (1768), and Lech Browary Wielkopolski in Poznań (1895). These particular breweries are the ones that brew the beer that is most willingly selected by Poles, for instance: Żubr, Tyskie, Lech, Książęce, Dębowe and Redds. Since its establishment, Kompania Piwowarska has been launching products that change the Polish beer market. The Company is known not only for its high beer quality, but also for its CSR policies.

Business Challenges

For such a large enterprise as Kompania Piwowarska, exchange of commercial documents may be extremely time consuming. Its Executive Board knew that a company cooperating with all the major retail chains in Poland may gain a lot from optimisation of processes related to workflow. Although the cost of printing and sending one document is no more than a few zlotys, when this amount is multiplied by tens of thousands of documents, it becomes very significant.

Kompania Piwowarska has decided to take a radical step – to give up on a majority of paper documents, including all documents printed via traditional channels. It is the first enterprise in the brewing industry to implement an EDI system on such a scale. Considering the environmental aspects – which are part of KP’s focus – the implementation of electronic data interchange was just a matter of time. The next step was to select an appropriate provider.

Why is an e-Invoicing a New Standard?

Savings: With electronic invoice workflow, we have substantially reduced the cost of handling single invoices. Less labour is required to process documentation which means real savings in employees’ time.

Ecology: electronic document exchange is also environmentally friendly. As a result of giving up on paper documents, the quantity of consumed paper is reduced which in turn leads to less environmental damage (e.g. tree cutting, production of greenhouse gases).

Less redundant tasks mean more time that can be devoted at the Company to generation of value added and its competitive advantages. When an invoice is placed on the Comarch B2B Network platform, a distributor receives an e-mail with information that a document has been dispatched and after a while the document changes its status to “delivered”. No electronic signature is required to authorise transactions.

Improved data quality: All the time the system monitors data quality eliminating potential errors that could occur with manual printing, dispatching, delivering and archiving of documents.

Solution

The platform that Comarch offered fully satisfied KP. With its high capacity (99.8% of documents processed in less than 30 seconds), 50,000 users in 40 countries and connections with 450 commercial networks, it allowed all the detailed requirements specified in the extensive implementation strategy of the solution to be met. Relying on Comarch’s experience in EDI systems, Kompania Piwowarska now exchanges data with 17 leading retail networks in Poland.

Additionally, it was important for the client that Comarch handles over 80 messages. Currently, the Comarch solution supports all types of documents used at Kompania Piwowarska, including:

standard invoices and their corrections
collective corrective invoices
distribution invoices
corrections of distribution invoices
debit notes
credit notes
orders
dispatch advices
order confirmations
evidence of delivery receipts
transfer advices
notification of returns

Dedicated previews of each type of document are another important element of the system. Logging into his account,
an employee of Kompania Piwowarska gains access to document templates developed especially for him. Comarch
and KP cooperated closely to personalise messages sent via B2B Network system.