kraft foods deutschland satisfies archival appetite with ibm. · kraft foods deutschland ibm...
TRANSCRIPT
“With DB2 Content Manager, we have transformed incoming invoice archival from an offline, after-the-fact activity into an integral part of the accounting process.”
–Sven-Erik Iwersen, Systems Analyst, Kraft Foods Deutschland
IBM Customer Success
Retail Foods Industry
Every day, at the Lörrach, Germany
factory of Kraft Foods Deutschland
GmbH & Co KG, several million
bars of Milka chocolate are carefully
enveloped in their legendary lavender
wrappers. Milka, which recently
celebrated its 100th year in production,
is enjoyed throughout Europe,
as are Kraft Foods’ other brands,
including Kaffee Hag, Jacobs Coffee,
Philadelphia Cream Cheese, Miracolí
and Kraft Ketchup. The company
distributes its products primarily
to retailers, but also serves bulk
consumers and the restaurant industry.
Kraft Foods Deutschland satisfies archival appetite with IBM.
With headquarters in Bremen, Germany, Kraft Foods Deutschland is a subsidiary of Illinois-based Kraft Foods, Inc., the world’s second-largest producer of food products.
Application
Electronic archival system for
6.5 million business documents
and photos
Business Benefits
Greatly increased archival capacity;
faster and easier access to
documents from any location;
reliable, long-term preservation
of valuable document assets;
greater efficiency through business
process integration
Software
IBM DB2 ® Content Manager; ® Content Manager; ®
IBM DB2 Universal Database™;
IBM DB2 Content Manager
CommonStore for SAP; IBM
Tivoli ®Storage Manager
Hardware
IBM ̂ xSeries® 350; ® 350; ®
IBM 3995 Optical Library
Business Partner
Voss Softwareberatung GmbH
Overview
Retail Foods Industry
Achieving all-you-can-store capability
In 1993, Kraft Foods performed a
market analysis of available archive
solutions, ultimately deciding on a
shortlist which included SER, FILENET
and IBM. Kraft Foods preferred the
solution based on DB2 information
management software from IBM
because of its superior price/
performance ratio. And because its
archived documents must be avail-
able for decades, the company
wanted an archive solution provider
with long-term viability. In IBM, Kraft
Foods assumes it will always have a
competent solution partner.
The core of the electronic archival
system (EAS) is IBM DB2 Content
Manager, which provides a complete
solution for entering, storing and
allocating data, including multimedia
formats. Other components include
IBM DB2 Universal Database, IBM
Tivoli Storage Manager for storage
management and data backup, IBM
DB2 Content Manager CommonStore
for SAP for seamless integration of
Kraft Food’s SAP R/3 enterprise resource
management system, and Kofax
Ascent Capture for scanning incoming
documents such as vendor invoices.
With such a wide-ranging distribution
chain, however, comes equally
extensive information management
challenges. Many of these challenges
stem from the financial side of the
company’s operations. In 2001, for
example, Kraft Foods Deutschland
issued some 1.2 million invoices to
supermarket chains, small retailers,
restaurants and wholesalers—a 20
percent increase in invoices over the
previous year. The invoices, as well as
the company’s goods receipts and
balance lists, must all be archived in
accordance with the law.
Not surprisingly, Kraft Foods
Deutschland has grown increasingly
short on archival space for its paper
documents. The company stored
paper documents in filing cabinets
throughout various departments and
a central archive. In fact, the finance
department began feeling the pinch
as far back as the early 1990s. “We
needed an electronic archive to
preserve these records,” recalls Kraft
Systems Analyst Sven-Erik Iwersen.
“We are still using just 60 percent of the capacity of this powerful document management system. When we find the archive system approaching 100 percent capacity, we know that the DB2 Content Manager solution will readily scale to provide more space.”
–Sven-Erik Iwersen
Using IBM software, Kraft Foods Deutschland manages financial information for some of the world’s strongest brands.
enables communication between
SAP R/3 and DB2 Content Manager
and for processing queries to DB2
Content Manager from Web browser-
based clients. Kraft Foods uses IBM
DB2 Content Manager CommonStore
for SAP to view original documents
through the SAP interface.
Kraft Foods worked with IBM Business
Partner Voss Softwareberatung (VSB)
to set up and customize the EAS. VSB
developed the Web client software for
querying DB2 Content Manager. It also
built an invoice-indexing program on
top of the open application program-
ming interface (API) structure of DB2
Content Manager. “The APIs of the
IBM solution are of great importance,”
Iwersen says. “DB2 Content Manager
is truly open thanks to its APIs, and we
were able to implement many of our
Two-thirds of the now approximately
6.5 million documents stored in the
EAS come from SAP R/3. Historical
photos of the company and its
traditional brands, such as Jacobs and
Suchard, have also been added. “We
handle a minimum of 20 megabytes of
data daily, but at the end of the month
or year, we might archive as many as
10 gigabytes,” explains Iwersen. “But
we are still using just 60 percent of the
capacity of this powerful document
management system.”
Soon, the promotional spots for
Jacobs, Milka and the other brands
will be archived as well. Even then, the
EAS will reach only 85 percent of its
current electronic archival capacity.
“When we find the archive system
approaching 100 percent capacity,”
Iwersen adds, “we know that the DB2
Content Manager solution will readily
scale to provide more space.”
Creating an open and secure system
The EAS runs on three IBM ^
xSeries 350 systems. At the heart of
the system is the library server, which
administers access rights and indexes
data for the stored objects. DB2
Universal Database stores the index
data as well as information about the
objects’ storage location. The objects
themselves reside on an IBM 3995
Optical Library Model C68, which
Kraft Foods administers with Tivoli
Storage Manager. An additional server
required functions without workarounds.”
In addition to e-mail archiving, for
example, Kraft and VSB used the APIs
to create an automatic import program
for Microsoft Office files.
Iwersen also worked with VSB to
develop special control programs
that help ensure the smooth
execution of EAS processes. These
programs include a three-step
disaster protection procedure, which
compresses and backs up the data
prior to archiving, imports it to the
library server and then transfers the
backed-up data as well as a copy
of the object server’s optical disks to
external off-site storage.
The EAS, powered by DB2 Content Manager, archives a variety of business documents including invoices and other business-critical financial documents.
For more information
Please contact your IBM marketing
representative, IBM Business Partner
or IBM Direct at: 1 800 IBM-CALL.
Visit our Web site at
ibm.com/software/data
For information about
Kraft Foods Deutschland, visit:
www.kraftfoods.de
Transforming and integrating
business processes
Kraft Foods Deutschland is gradually
extending the EAS with customized
applications and functions. In-house
invoices—based on Microsoft
Access—have been archived in DB2
Content Manager since November
2001. The invoices, which now come
in through e-mail rather than by fax
or the postal system, are indexed and
archived in a batch run. Thus, if the
Berlin site assists the Paris branch
office with a coffee shipment, this
so-called intercompany invoice can
be archived by the bookkeeping staff
as soon as it is created.
Taking advantage of the fact that
invoices are entered into the EAS
early in the accounting process, Kraft
Foods used SAP’s workflow capabilities
to add a downstream workflow for
account auditing. “With DB2 Content
Manager, we have transformed incoming
invoice archival from an offline, after-
the-fact activity into an integral part
of the accounting process,” Iwersen
says. A similar transformation has
occurred in the sales department,
where Kraft Foods has activated a
workflow for refunds.
Currently, approximately 300 Kraft
Foods employees use the EAS,
accessing it over the Internet from six
different sites. According to Iwersen,
as the system is extended with
workflows for the various departments
within the organization, and all the
workflows are tied to the central docu-
ment archive, the EAS is effectively
helping to integrate the organization
and its business processes.
Moreover, as the electronic archive
grows, users will increasingly rely
on it as a permanent source of the
company’s document assets. “While
the law requires that invoices be kept
for 10 years, or until a tax office audit
is completed, historical documents
such as promotional spots and photos
should be preserved for generations
to come,” Iwersen explains. “Investment
security was, therefore, a fundamental
reason why we chose the DB2 infor-
mation management solution. If you
archive something for decades, you
can run into problems if your archival
provider goes out of business,” he
says. “With IBM, we can assume that
we will always have a competent
solution partner.”
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