LANSA Touts Long Relationship with German Material Supplier

October 29, 2013 Alex Woodie

Baustoff Union, a provider of building materials, equipment, and construction services in the German state of Bavaria, implemented an AS/400-based ERP system in the late 1990s. Since then, the ERP system has been extended and modernized in multiple ways using tools from LANSA under a partnership that continues to this day.

LANSA recently revisited its Baustoff Union (BU) relationship with a case study posted to its website. It all started in 1997 when BU implemented the RPG-based ERP suite from S.M. Hartmann (SMH) GmbH, a German software company. “The choice that we made over 15 years ago still proves to be the correct one today, even though market conditions and technologies have completely changed,” Otto Förtsch, Managing Director of BU, says in the case study.

In 2006, SMH started working with LANSA, and has remodeled its ERP suite extensively. Using LANSA tools, SMH has developed a modern user interface, created dashboards that integrate with Excel, integrated with EDI, created Web services, integrated with TomTom mobile navigation systems, and created mobile apps for iPhones and iPads.

The integration with TomTom’s Webfleet software, for example, was accomplished using LANSA Integrator. According to the case study, the integration enables information to be shared between the in-truck navigation devices and BU’s ERP system, which allows BU to assign jobs based on the best-positioned vehicle.

The EDI and XML interface work was handled with LANSA Composer. According to the case study, the integration allows BU’s ERP system to automatically send orders in either XML or EDI format to Hagebau, a German chain of home improvement stores. LANSA Composer also enables BU to retrieve billing information from individual suppliers using Hagebau’s FTP server.

LANSA’s mobile app framework, LongRange, is also playing a role at BU. SMH uses LongRange to expose certain SMH ERP system functionality to mobile devices. BU’s executive team then uses iPads and iPhones to access the ERP system from the field.

“Since partnering with LANSA in 2006, we have all the tools at hand to create and maintain contemporary software applications and to modernize and enhance existing proven IBM i programs,” SMH managing director Siegfried Hartmann says in the case study. “LANSA’s tools are cross-platform, so we can use the same skills for IBM i, Windows, Web and Mobile solutions, keeping our team lean.”