The Daniels Group is a casebook example of a company that depends on electronic trad-
ing with its major customers but does not have its own in-house dedicated EDI team.
In fact—unusually for a company of this size—nobody at Daniels carries a business card
with the word EDI on it. Instead, the company relies on the capability of GXS Trading
Grid® to manage the variety of different EDI and AS2 formats and to provide a seamless
interface to the company’s ERP application.
The energy of the company’s IT team is focused on managing the ERP system and inte-
grating new divisions and operations into a highly centralized approach. A recent acqui-
sition, for example, was Farmhouse Fare which makes fresh puddings for major retailers.
As Malcolm Clarke notes: “We don’t have the staffing levels to look after the intricacies
of electronic trading standards. We don’t see that as part of our core expertise and we are
happy to rely on GXS Trading Grid to take care of that part of the business process.”
Malcolm Clarke is crystal-clear on what electronic trading contributes to this process:
“The benefits to us are accuracy and timeliness. These have been vital to our growth, and
they will remain vital to our future development and expansion.”
There are additional complex challenges as Malcolm Clarke wryly notes, “The super-
markets like to interpret standards and formats in different ways. AS2 data, in particular,
means different certificates and this could entail a lot of additional work if we did not
have GXS Trading Grid in place to manage the translations and take the complexity off
our plate.”
One trend the company has noticed in the last year or so is an increased interest in
ASNs (advance ship notices). Supermarket customers are looking to streamline their
warehouses, so the new process goal is to send an ASN electronically and then scan the
truck in when it arrives at the warehouse. Once again, accuracy is vital.
Private label is also growing, and Daniels is a major player here. The company uses
the same GXS Trading Grid infrastructure to manage its private label business with
major supermarkets. “Flexibility and scalability are important benefits for us,” says Mal-
colm Clarke.