,allowExpansion)
De Agostini closes the distance between the company and the end customer
Air Reply and Oracle NetSuite to support sales order management
The challenge: supporting ecommerce at newsagents
De Agostini Publishing S.p.A., a company of the De Agostini Editore S.p.A. Group and leading Italian publishing house with 120 years of history, has always had a knack for adapting its business model to the latest market changes, thus offering its customers the best possible quality.
With the new digital transformation project De Agostini’s strategic goal was to combine the traditional sales channel, represented by newsagents, with a new eCommerce system characterised by a sales orders management function capable of reaching new markets, as well as simplifying internal processes, from logistics to finance.
Centralising end-customer management through Oracle Netsuite
In this context, the need to standardise and centralise the management of the end customer was identified. The solution involved a single cloud-based sales order management system for all Group companies, operating in different international markets and equipped with highly heterogeneous legacy systems, while maintaining the current systems to capitalise on investments already made in the past.
The ideal solution therefore needed to be able to support the Group’s global growth process on several fronts:
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Standardising and speeding
up internal processe
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Acting as a hub amongst all the various digital systems involved, enabling integration with different payment systems and accounting systems currently in use
)
Managing the process of sending
sales orders to various
logistics warehouses
)
Ensuring a single database
for subsequent business
Intelligence processing
An integrated order management process: from the Italian market to the rest of Europe
By leveraging the native capabilities and flexibility of the Oracle NetSuite, Air Reply supported the implementation of the end-to-end order management process, starting with the registration of all international orders received through the group’s heterogeneous sales channels and ensuring the timely monitoring of the processing and delivery of the same orders. This flow required the integration of all the necessary components to ensure that payments could be collected correctly, both in purely electronic form and through different means, to facilitate the automatic reconciliation of payments obtained with the corresponding accounting records and to provide the Customer Service and Business Intelligence systems with a unique and coherent database. Thanks to the Warehouse Management features available on the Oracle NetSuite, it was also possible to integrate the IT systems of several De Agostini partner logistics operators, one of which is based on the proprietary LEA Reply system.
In just 4 months the system designed, built and implemented by Air Reply has become operational on the Italian market where, thanks to the proprietary NExIL SuiteApp (NetSuite Extended Italian Localisation), it has been possible to complement the core processes with the production of all accounting documents and tracks, as well as ensuring support for electronic invoicing, which is fundamental for operations on the Italian market. Subsequently, several roll-outs have extended the solution to other European markets, including the UK, Germany and France.
The success of the solution justifies new investments aimed not only at its geographical extension, but also at the integration of new product lines and features, in line with the evolution of De Agostini's business model.
AIR REPLY’S VALUE
De Agostini chose Air Reply, acknowledging its long-standing experience in processes managed by the Oracle NetSuite, the strong consulting and customisation skills of Reply’s team and their specific knowledge and expertise in Italian administration and taxation, culminating in the integration of the NExIL SuiteApp, the largest-scale Italian localisation of the Oracle NetSuite.
De Agostini Editore - Sub-holding leader of the Group’s editorial activities, operates in 30 countries with publications in 13 languages and is organised in the following business areas:
• Publishing, including traditional collectible activities and subscription commerce initiatives;
• Libri e Scuola (focused on the educational sector), which encompasses the editorial operations of DeAgostini Scuola, DeA Planeta Libri and Libromania;
• Digital DeAgostini, which manages the DeAKids and DeAJunior satellite TV stations and the DeAbyDay.it network, as well as KidsMe, company specialised in the development and distribution of TV content dedicated to the children and family segment.
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Air Reply is the Reply Group company specialised in the design and integration of the innovative Cloud-based NetSuite ERP solution. Air Reply is a NetSuite Solution Provider and Select Member of the SuiteCloud Developer Network (SDN) and has developed the Italian localisation bundle for NetSuite (NExIL), which enables Italian companies to meet the tax requirements set out in Italian legislation using NetSuite. Thanks to its highly specialised team, Air Reply provides end-to-end support to companies in the Italian and European market. With their extensive knowledge of business and regulatory processes, the Air Reply team enables customers to review business functions that need to be migrated to a cloud-based model and to design and implement customised applications (desktop and mobile).