Swedish brewery Spendrups saves valuable time working with GoAnywhere Managed File Transfer (MFT) software
Spendrups Bryggeri AB, founded in 1897, is the largest and most well-known family-owned and independent brewery in Sweden. Four million hectolitres of beverages are produced annually by the company, which employs 1100 people. These beverages are bottled and distributed to Swedish restaurants, the monopoly retail chain Systembolaget, and grocery stores. Looking for software that would enable quick, simple and secure integrations, they are now happy using GoAnywhere for Managed File Transfers (MFT), implemented by BlueFinch.
By Jaimie van de Braak
Getting rid of complex, lengthy integrations
Spendrups already works with several integration solutions, such as BizTalk for Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). “However, these are very large and complex systems to use”, says Kjell Bjärud, manager IT Operations at Spendrups. “A complex data exchange flow requires four to six months, due to a shortage of programmers. A real bottleneck for Spendrups’ integrations development. Therefore, we needed an MFT solution that did not heavily rely on developers to create an integration.”
Project kick off and cooperation with BlueFinch
Kjell: “And that is how we got to GoAnywhere, implemented by BlueFinch. A perfect match due to the ease of use, secure workflows, and excellent support provided by BlueFinch. In addition, the solution is incredibly cost effective.”
“We started the project with a training by the experts of BlueFinch”, Kjell continues. “GoAnywhere is a very user-friendly program, so we mastered it quickly. After a Proof of Concept (PoC) we were up and running in just one week with our first dataflows. In the beginning of the project, we had some questions due to our lack of knowledge. Fortunately, the experts of BlueFinch are highly knowledgeable about both Managed File Transfer processes and the specifics of the software. Thus, they did a great job of helping us. Resulting in the implementation of the test and production environments of GoAnywhere without any delay.”
Great testing environment
Spendrups is working with two GoAnywhere environments: one for testing and the other for live production. “This is fantastic, because it allows us to test every flow and parameter before implementing the integrations in a live environment”, Kjell says. “We mix and match the software’s standard components and parameters to create custom integration flows. Before going live, there is no need to revoke code. This is a lot more fail-safe, compared to changing the code first.”
“We do not see any limitations on where to use GoAnywhere”
With the GoAnywhere MFT solution Spendrups has 68 scheduled integrations running and another 100 which are executed manually. Kjell: “The software is simple to use and the integrations do not necessarily require the help of developers. Even I can create an integration as a team lead. With the predefined parameters the deployment process is incredibly quick, which accelerates time to market.”
“The more integrations we build, the more critical the software becomes to the brewery”, Kjell continues. We use GoAnywhere to send labels from our ERP system to the label printers, to transfer images from a photographer to e-commerce in our marketing department, but also in HR and for our car fleet. We do not see any limitations on where GoAnywhere can be used.”
Monitoring possibilities
When using the MFT software of GoAnywhere, it is possible to send out notifications about errors via SMS. Kjell: “We have not yet used this functionality. But we do monitor all the flows by performing checkups. Sometimes the source data is inaccurate, columns are missing, or the target system is unresponsive. This data is then collected in an external folder, making it simple to modify before sending it further.”
Future plans: redundant servers
“Upgrading our server is on the roadmap ahead of us”, Kjell concludes. “On the advice of BlueFinch, we are currently looking into a redundant server in order to maintain multiple data flows simultaneously. This is a virtual server with the ability to scale up capacity when needed. 24/7 and 365 days a year. Similar to how our plants produce our beverages. It is great to have a partner like BlueFinch that goes beyond just a software implementation and actually helps you use the solution to its full potential.”
