Magners Irish Cider needs to keep drinkers well stocked with its popular products, which means keeping its supply chain operations as efficient as possible.

The brewer has recently moved to an "always online" platform using Inovis Software's TrustedLink and BizConnect products for electronic data interchange (EDI) to manage its outsourced business processes more efficiently.

Magners business systems analyst Jimmy McHugh said the company used paper invoices initially, but changed when the firm started to deal with major retailers such as Sainsbury's and Tesco.

"The supermarkets were insisting that invoices were processed using EDI. So we went to Colmans Computer Systems – Inovis' partner in Ireland - and worked with them to enable invoice mapping and order functionality from our ERP [enterprise resource planning] system directly to their systems," he said.

As the business expanded and Magners needed to be even more efficient, it outsourced transport and logistics operations to Lucey Transport.

"We used TrustedLink to send the order details straight to the transport company, so we do not hold them up by needing to phone them or send faxes," said McHugh.

This allowed Lucey to better organise stock movements as well as cut the number of vehicles on the road and their associated environmental impact.

Magners has an IBM iSeries system and runs AS2, a secure data transfer protocol. Some companies such as Asda and pub chain JD Wetherspoon do not want to exchange orders using traditional EDI, where the transaction goes to Magners' hosting centre and through a document mailbox.

"They want it direct from our system to their system, with no middleman. This involves extra encryption, which the AS2 server does," said McHugh.

Colmans manages Magners back-office systems using its local expertise. Magners IT department handles all first-level calls, with issues on ERP, wareh ousing and EDI systems. If Magners cannot solve the problem, it can call on support from Colmans, which would perform any modifications to the ERP system, as well as any upgrades. This allows Magners to concentrate on new business initiatives and projects, such as its recent launch of pear cider.

Another process outsourced using EDI is hiring pallets from container specialist Chep, for transporting products to retailers.

"Our ERP and warehousing systems make sure that we hire the palette for the minimum time, and this has saved us hundreds of thousands of pounds annually," said McHugh.

Further savings have been made in printing. Rather than print thousands of invoices every day, put them into envelopes and post them, Magners now sends invoice files to supplier Print Post from its systems through TrustedLink and BizConnect, which manages the communications and confirmation of the message.

"BizConnect automatically generates an email, counts how many invoices are on it, sends it to Print Post and finance, and that gives us 100 per cent confidence that every customer is getting an invoice," said McHugh.

Magners declares exports electronically through its ERP system using TrustedLink, straight to Irish Customs, which can give a "green light" or an " orange light" if it wants to inspect anything.

Magners' business has quadrupled since 2003, with a large growth spike at the start of its high-profile advertising campaign.

"We’ve grown the cider market massively," said McHugh.

"[From 2003 to 2006] we really had the cider market to ourselves. Our unique sell was the pint bottle – you buy a pint and pour it over ice in a glass."

McHugh said that in 2006 competitors such as Scottish & Newcastle woke up, and launched a similar pint bottle with ice.

"They had adverts with a nature theme and basically did the same thing. They grew massively as well," he said.

McHugh expects more of the same in future, as the company rolls out EDI to its suppliers.

"We want the people who supply our bottles and cans to declare their shipments in advance electronically, so we can schedule the deliveries," he said.

"We also want them to send their invoices electronically, so that rather than us opening envelopes and putting it on our system and barcode scanning and so on, one electronic file drops into our system, also into our document imaging system, and we can automatically match it to the purchasing order – and check order size and prices.

Magners suppliers' are happy because they will be paid faster, and staff are not doing mundane tasks.

"We’ll be rolling out with our biggest supplier of bottles in the near future," said McHugh.