Making good connections with Atlas EDI

In mainland Europe, the vast majority of Audi, BMW, Porsche and Volkswagen drivers will be unaware of the critically important job that Altenloh, Brink and Company (ABC) plays in keeping their prestigious cars on the road.

About 50% of cars in Europe carry ABC’s screws, connections and other components, manufactured in the German company’s plants at Ennepetal and Gevelsberg in the industrial heartland of North Rhine Westphalia.

Its’ reputation is as a market leader, an innovator and a developer of new, ground breaking “connection technology” products, not only for the automotive market but also for use in mobile phones and by industry generally.

ABC has 11 subsidiaries throughout Europe. In the UK it trades as ABC Spax specialising in woodscrews, supplying both trade and retail customers from its base in Wolverhampton. Its customers include household names such as Jewson, B&Q, Magnet, Buildbase and Focus DIY. From small beginnings, ABC Spax has seen sales grow by 50% over the past two years with annual turnover up to more than £6 million.

This growth has coincided with greatly increased use of electronic trading. But with each trading partners’ needs, software and technical capabilities varying greatly, ABC Spax needed a supplier who understood both the technical issues and the needs of customers. The answer was API’s Atlas Matrix Managed Service.

ABC Spax simply sends its electronic files - such as invoices, credits and orders - often in a wide variety of formats - to API through API’s own BDX network and Atlas Matrix does the rest. Atlas Matrix sends and receives data to and from ABC’s Spax’s customers and then returns the data to ABC Spax’s back office. Atlas also acts as ABC Spax’s technical representative in discussions with customers to resolve technical issues and holds all of ABC Spax’s data archive for retrieval when required.

Says ABC Spax Office Manager Bev Cross: “It’s an ideal solution - we simply send the files to Atlas and they do the rest. Its fantastic! We don’t have an IT department here so Atlas has taken on the role on our behalf.”

“Our previous supplier was slow and unresponsive, but Pete Shelmerdeine at API is great, he really looks after us, he talks directly with our customers to answer questions, resolve queries and pull everything together for us. We trust him.There is no doubt that this solution has meant that we have not had to recruit additional employees just to manually key in data. We regard Atlas as an extension of our own team but we can buy their expertise and customer service on a basis that suits our own needs and circumstances.”

For more details on Atlas Matrix Managed Service click here.

To find out more about Atlas BDX click here.

For a downloadable pdf of this story showing how Atlas BDX and Matrix help ABC Spax integrate with their customers click here.