The Client:

Athena Spa is a company working in different areas, ranging from the production of mechanical and electronic components for the automotive industry and aftermarket , to the production of technical materials and molded rubber products for industry in general. This is accompanied by the exclusive distribution in Italy of some international brands related to sport on two wheels and free time. Athena Spa has four production sites in Italy, one in India, one in Brazil and distribution units in Spain and the USA.

The problem:

Speed up and automate all the operations related to the data exchange between the Aftermarket portal and the ERP. The needs expressed by the customer were two:

• Manage in real time the upgrade of the product catalog that is published on the portal.
• Synchronize data of orders placed by customers and by the sales force network on the Portal with the ERP environment, loading data in real time for a more efficient process management by the Sales Office .

The Solution:

The implementing of Duplo has allowed to manage in real time and in bidirectional mode the upgrade processes between ERP software, located in the headquarters of the company in the province of Vicenza, and the e-commerce portal, hosted in a Service Provider Datacenter in Bologna. In particular, using Duplo has solved the following problems:

• Due to the geographical distribution of the server, the catalog was updated via asynchronous mode, with data alignment performed by scheduled operations. By introducing Duplo, Items' data which reside in the ERP's database are now synchronized in real time with the tables used in the Portal for the Aftermarket catalog.
• Similarly, the orders data collected by the e-commerce section of the Portal, inserted by the company's sales force and by customers, are now synchronized in real time with the ERP's database, allowing a on time management of order fulfillment.
• The temporary unavailability of the communication line and / or the temporary unavailability of the database (eg during maintenance operations), are automatically managed thanks to the particular features of the product, capable to manage the data capture even in off-line mode to restore the exact sequence when the line's and the database's availability turns back.

Advantages for the client:

The exchange of information to and from the e-commerce website happens now in real time, making it much more efficient and accurate the work of users who manage the back office, maintaining the whole structure of the information system and without any other application . The introduction of Duplo, in addition to solving the problems related to synchronization of the data related to the Aftermarket's management, allowed the customer to have a structure that can be used in the future development plans of the Company, such as the creation of a Corporate Portal and the exchange of data in real time with the other companies of the Group.

"Duplo has given a concrete answer to the need of speedness and automatic alignment of the product catalog and e-commerce order flow, which has resulted in a considerable time saving. The environment's setup has not been particularly difficult, in one morning all was already fully operative."

Emanuel Righetto
Web Strategist
Athena S.p.a.