Flowgear, the agile integration platform allows SA Premix to integrate orders from its e-commerce portal with its ERP system in order to automate the creation of production jobs.

SA Premix, a developer and manufacturer of nutritional additives for the agricultural and veterinary market, and part of the AECI group, developed an online e-commerce portal where orders could be entered, but needed to integrate that system with its SYSPRO ERP software so that sales orders could be generated in SYSPRO and opened as production jobs in Work In Progress (WIP).

In selecting an integration strategy, George Hayter, IT Manager at SA Premix, had the option of developing a hand-coded integration or going for an integration platform. A SYSPRO consultant suggested he evaluate the Flowgear integration platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) .

“We started trialing Flowgear in January 2016, and went live with the integration three months later in April,” said Hayter. “During that time we built over 100 workflows ourselves as we tested different integration requirements and scenarios.”

Due to the nature of its business, many of the orders that SA Premix receives are unique and involve complex formulations. The e-commerce portal enables the formulation requirements to be captured, but then they have to be converted into jobs in SYSPRO WIP. “We would never be able to add the jobs into WIP manually,” commented Hayter. “In the first two months after we went live, our integration workflows created over 2500 jobs in SYSPRO. Being able to do that without errors is important for the customer service we aim to deliver.”

Hayter says SA Premix has further plans for Flowgear. “We want to see how we can optimize our current integration workflows, but after that we need to use Flowgear to capture data from PLCs (programmable logic controllers) in the factory so we can monitor and control machinery on the factory floor.”