Automotive

Case Study: Streamlight

Streamlight manufactures and markets tough, durable, long-lasting lights for professional and recreational use. Their innovative portable lighting solutions are among the leading products used in law enforcement, fire and rescue, military, industrial and automotive, outdoor sports and recreation, and much more. In addition, Streamlight products are distributed in more than 60 countries worldwide.
Business Challenge

StreamlightMany of Streamlight's largest customers have demanded EDI, and it has always been in the company's best interests to meet this demand. Streamlight's previous system for order transactions was clumsy and programming-intensive, making it difficult for IT staff to effectively manage communication and performance. Data translation and integration was a real challenge, as was integration with their existing systems.

At the same time, Streamlight relied on a value-added network service (VANS) for trading partner communication. While the VANS did provide satisfactory performance, it required substantial maintenance when handling transactions. Because the VANS relied on a dial-up connection, three transactions per day could take as long as 90 minutes. Moreover, transactions at the end of the day often required an IT employee to stay overtime and provide troubleshooting if necessary.

Streamlight evaluated several solutions before choosing TIE. Few alternatives were considered to be an advancement over Streamlight's existing processes, and even fewer appeared to be durable enough to handle their enterprise requirements.
Solution

The TIE Kinetix platform offers the industry's leading Business-to-Business Integration solution, including applications for advanced data transformation, integration, and workflow. It also includes XML, EDI, and database translation engines that are powerful enough to process large volumes of data and eliminate the many processing barriers that hinder rapid XML/EDI translation.

TIE eVision software provides a complete solution for sending and receiving EDI, XML, and non-formatted messages over multiple communication protocols, including value-added network services (VANS) and the Internet. It also features the tools that are necessary to effectively manage enterprise data transformation based on specific application integration requirements. TIE eVision addresses fundamental integration requirements and simplifies data transformation. TIE's engines are able to process large volumes of data and eliminate the many processing barriers that hinder rapid XML/EDI translation. Their performance has been proven to be effective under pressure by some of the world's largest enterprises.

TIE Value-Added Network Services provides secure, no-nonsense business-to-business communications. Our flexible VANS solution allows you to exchange electronic data in any format with your trading partners, using virtually any communications or network protocol. For many organizations, TIE's VANS solution offers multiple communication protocols for anytime/anywhere access and flexible data transformation and exchange that can handle any format.
Results

As an EDI solution, Streamlight found TIE eVision software to be easier to use, with less data integration and administration required. EDI transactions are transparent to Streamlight customers, as TIE eVision presents little or no maintenance issues for the company to resolve. At the same time, TIE's solution integrates easily with Streamlight's existing systems. The company's IT staff considers TIE Kinetix to be a considerable advancement over the previously evaluated EDI solutions.

TIE eVision handles EDI transactions between Streamlight and 25 enterprise-level trading partners with relative ease. Streamlight estimates that, without TIE eVision, these transactions would require 4 hours per day and 3 staff members to complete. Today the company's EDI system is almost completely self-sufficient.

More recently Streamlight switched to TIE's VANS and has realized significant time and cost savings. The transactions that used to require 90 minutes or more a day are now completed in less than 15 minutes, with some transactions completed in seconds. TIE's VANS allows Streamlight to employ an AS2 connection, which significantly increases their communication speed. It has also proven to be virtually maintenance-free when compared to Streamlight's previous VANS provider.

Streamlight credits the reliability of TIE software and the quality of TIE's customer service for their success. The company has rarely had to contact TIE because of a performance issue. However, when Streamlight contacts TIE support with questions regarding the software, they always receive a quick and professional response.

"I often find myself saying 'thank goodness for TIE solutions'. The products just work, which is one of the highest compliments you can pay to a software vendor."

- Michael Zahner, IT Director, Streamlight