Forth Ports Business Goals
Forth Ports Group consists of 8 strategically positioned ports across the UK to create a sophisticated and nationwide network of integrated services. Their ports facilitate the fast and efficient import and export of raw materials and finished products, operate as logistical bases for major construction projects across the country, and are considered hubs for key established and emerging industries, from oil & gas and agriculture, to renewable energy and North Sea decommissioning. The group ports handle 16 million tonnes of cargo per annum and contribute £394 million GVA.
To realize their vision of expanding the business in an effective and sustainable manner, they were keen on integrating their ports. By achieving seamless integration with their high-profile client, they would be able to stay updated on every shipment detail and associated object information from both ends.
Technological Challenges
After initiation of the program, our team immediately consulted the teams at forth port to gain a thorough understanding of their data-related challenges, and expected outcomes. After comprehending their objectives, and a thorough data analysis, the seasoned consultants at NeosAlpha crafted a well-defined solution-roadmap addressing the data sequencing and scheduling challenges and its underlying functionality.
Leveraging the power of Boomi iPaaS, we were able to create a highly effective data transformation flow for the various data files. For real-time events, we implemented an event-driven transformation flow.
Our integration interfaces rendered processes wherein disparate files of varying data objects would be retrieved from a Forth Port’s single platform and automatically transformed and routed to various different destinations of Forth Port’s customer endpoints, all the while maintaining the sequence of data flow as mandated by business requirements
While in return response another set of process, were set up as a scheduled flow that automatically executed at predetermined intervals to extract the data files from customer end points transform the file format and lodged them to Forth Ports system(s).
To ensure the security of the data and mitigate the risk of data loss, we implemented a key Boomi feature, the Boomi Atom Queue. This feature proved particularly useful in preventing data loss in scenarios of server or connection errors wherein Atom Q competency of powerful data storage unit kept the data intact.
Additionally, we set up a mail connection that enabled the client to receive error messages in real-time, along with the rejected documents, should any issues arise such as incorrect data or server errors.
How NeosAlpha Helped
Our first order of business was to meet with the client’s sales and customer management teams to fully understand their key concerns, data issues, and impact. After carefully listening to the team and understanding their goals, our NeosAlpha’s Boomi experts presented a clearly defined roadmap and timeline.
Our priority was to retrieve the sample data to get to know which fields are mandatory and which not are. After performing a detailed data analysis, our consultants worked closely with the client to understand the functionality and the basis of creating invoice. For example, our client wants only those customer’s invoices who belong to the UK or we can say whose subsidiary is UK.
We performed several dry runs in Boomi to get the exact customer to deal with new customers as well as old customers. Because new customers’ details should get integrated as it is but for the old customer we first need to check its required parameters and its currency then on that basis we update it accordingly.
We did not need to stop here, sometimes we got the same shopify order again and again to create an invoice and also duplicate customers in Netsuite. Then we modified the process accordingly to validate the duplicacy and either update it or create it.
In the case of stock we analyzed the exact parameters and item details. So that we gave the exact accurate results for stock updates in shopify from analyzing the Netsuite.
Results
Upon completion of the highly optimized bidirectional data flow, we were able to generate the desired output of
- Significantly reducing the need for manual intervention. With the system now fully automated, both real-time and scheduled data processing were handled seamlessly.
- Moreover, we were able to overcome the challenge of data loss by implementing fail-safe measures that kicked in whenever inconveniences such as server or connection errors occurred during the message transfer process for any object. As a result, not a single shipment detail, order detail, or any port-related information linked with Forth Port’s client was lost or left unrecognized, ensuring complete business accuracy and reliability.
