S4i Lands Deal with Retalix Customer
February 28, 2012 Alex Woodie
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S4i Systems‘s electronic document management software is being used to reduce dependence on paper documents at Lipari Foods, a Midwestern wholesale food distributor that runs the IBM i-based retail ERP system from Retalix. From its warehouse in Warren, Michigan, Lipari Foods distributes deli, bakery, packaging, seafood, confections, grocery, and food service products to 11 Midwestern states. The company claims that a commitment to investing in advanced technology–including IBM i systems and applications, wireless barcode scanning and voice picking, and GPS vehicle tracking–allows it to meet the tight delivery windows and high expectations of its customers. Now S4i Express is part of that advanced technology helping to drive efficiency at Lipari. Earlier this month, the Southern California software company announced that the implementation of S4i had begun. The first stage involved the Desktop Capture component of the S4i suite, which ingests paper-based documents from Fujitsu scanners. This setup is being used to generate PDF versions of a range of documents, including purchase orders, bills, account payable deductions for vendors, vendor contracts, insurance forms, and HR documents, among others. Lipari, which had 580 employees in 2010 according to a Kronos case study, plans to use S4i’s software to automate the distribution of invoices, credit memos, and statements to their customers through a Web portal. Purchase orders, vendor billings, and AP deductions for vendors are also being processed with this desktop capture solution, and made available to partners through another Web portal. “Lipari is using pioneering methods in the way we will be allowing our users, including employees, customers, and vendors, to retrieve documents from within their current business applications,” says Michael Hegarty, Lipari’s director of vendor programs. Hegarty says the installation so far has gone smoothly, and that the work S4i has done with Retalix systems in the past has paid off. “We were signed, installed, and configured within 30 days with over a dozen document definitions completed. And with out-of-the-box APIs, we’re allowed to customize as many Retalix screens as we desire,” he says.
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