Polskie Składy Armatury was founded 20 years ago in 2004 and today comprises 17 companies in Poland. Thanks to its long-standing cooperation with more than 130 suppliers, PSA is an attractive partner on the Polish market with extensive experience in the water, sewage and gas industry.
The main objective of Polskie Składy Armatury sp. z o.o. is to increase market competitiveness and provide group members, as well as PSA associated companies, with the most attractive purchasing conditions from renowned manufacturers in the water, sewage and gas industries. It is therefore not surprising that the PSA Group - with the aim of increasing competitiveness - decided to implement electronic data exchange. The automation of supply chain processes is one of the success factors in the wider trade. In doing so, the company was also able to minimise the risk of human error.
A tailored solution
In the initial phase of the project, EDITEL Polska's experts carried out an analysis of the client's needs. This enabled them to adapt the proposed solutions.
The implementation for the PSA Group was not an ordinary process. The Group is made up of 17 companies, each with its own separate IT system. Thus, for the Group as a whole, we were dealing with the first implementation - at the level of the Group's headquarters - and the remaining 12 implementations so far for individual companies - the shareholders. Most of the Group's companies used a fully automatic solution - full integration of the ERP system with the EDI infrastructure using dedicated software offered by EDITEL Polska. Another way to achieve full integration is through the use of APIs. In some cases, it was necessary to use a portal solution (WebEDI), which allows EDI communication to be used immediately and without any preparation on the part of the IT systems. The WebEDI solution can be used wherever the IT system needs to be adapted for full integration - until then, the portal solution allows EDI communication to be used. All implemented companies have additionally gained access to an electronic invoice archiving service.
EDI solutions from EDITEL Polska were designed to enable integration with any ERP system, which was particularly important in the context of the technological diversity among the companies that make up the PSA Group.
Effect of implementation
The implementation project started in June 2021. At that time, only 2 out of 10 invoices were processed via EDI at PSA headquarters. In the following months, this figure started to increase and so in December 2023 it was already 4 out of 10 invoices. The project is still open and new suppliers continue to join the project to improve their business communication with the PSA Group.
The opinion of one of the EDI system users, a representative of Polskie Skład Armatury, is the best summary of the entire project:
‘The electronic exchange of invoices has definitely improved and accelerated our work, we are more efficient. Thanks to xml we can accept a much higher volume of documents at the same time, at the moment I can't imagine working without this tool’.
