Challenges
Ricola is one of the most modern and innovative manufacturers of herbal drops in the world. Ricola’s IT Manager, Mr. Rolf Kohler was introduced to Symtrax for the first time at the “SAPPHIRE” SAP exhibition in Frankfurt in 2010 where Symtrax was presenting its Output Management Solution Compleo for SAP.
At the time, Ricola’s SAP system was generating invoices and purchase orders formatted in PDF, but the process of sending invoices by email to their wholesalers in the United States was completely manual. Seeking to resolve this issue, Mr. Kohler spoke with Symtrax representatives who showed him a real time demonstration right at their booth, that perfectly matched Ricola’s needs.
Solution
Using Compleo Ricola’s PDFs are grouped by wholesaler and automatically sent by email once a day. The PDF documents are synchronized with their SAP database by using a query variable to find the email address of the correct wholesaler, completely automating the entire process. Additionally, Compleo limits an email’s number of attachments to 10 PDFs automatically and concatenates them. Compleo generates a new email if the number of attachments is more than 10.
Compleo modules allow Ricola to retrieve non-formatted spools from within their SAP system, and convert them into PDF and send them to the correct users. Mr. Kohler explains that this solution was: “easy to implement and that Symtrax completed the entire implementation: from the remote installation to the implementation of the desired automation, all within a week. I am very satisfied with the responsiveness of their customer service and impressed by the quick implementation with our existing system”. Mr. Kohler believes the main benefit of Compleo is the SAP connector followed by the different modules (Layout and Supervisor) that exactly match his needs.
Benefits
Compleo allows Ricola to avoid input errors and send in a single document that includes both invoices and purchase orders automatically to their wholesales. The number of attached documents is kept to 10 or below so that emails aren’t returned as too large. The process saves Ricola staff about two hours per day and improves service with their vendors, helping to insure prompt invoice payment.
About Ricola
Ricola is one of the most modern and innovative manufacturers of herb drops in the world. Ricola exports nearly 30 different ranges of herb drops and teas to over 50 countries.
The family-run company has its headquarters in Laufen, near Basel, Switzerland. Subsidiary companies are located in Italy, the UK, Asia and the USA.
Traditional values of a family-run enterprise coupled with Swiss quality and a passion for innovation define the success of the Ricola global brand.
