Nestlé Portugal

Nestlé at a glance

Nestlé is the world’s largest food and beverage company and its headquarters are in the Swiss town of Vevey, where it was founded more than 150 years ago. It is present in 186 countries around the world and its 276,000 employees are committed to Nestlé’s purpose of developing the power of food to improve the quality of life for all, today and for future generations. Nestlé offers a broad portfolio of products and services for people and their pets throughout their lives. Its more than 2,000 brands range from global icons like NESCAFÉ or NESPRESSO, to widely recognized locally manufactured brands like CERELAC, NESTUM and SICAL, among many others. The Company’s performance is guided by its Nutrition, Health and Wellness strategy and underpinned by strong commitments to the environmental sustainability of all its operations, where the ultimate goal is to achieve Net Zero by 2050. To meet this roadmap, Nestlé is focused on advancing regenerative food systems at scale, involving its entire value chain.

In Portugal, Nestlé is present since 1923 and currently has 2,347 employees, having generated in 2021 a turnover of 625 million euros. It currently has two factories (Porto and Avanca), a distribution center (Avanca) and five commercial branches spread over the mainland and the islands.

Origin of the EDI and Electronic Invoice project

The size of Nestlé Portugal, the large product portfolio, the different business areas and the high number of customers require the adoption of administrative management processes that are fast, efficient and minimize the probability of errors and failures in information flows, exchanged on a daily basis between the company and its suppliers and customers.

These were some of the reasons that led the company, early on, to adopt technological solutions that enabled it to create the agility required to remain a leader of his sector. It was with this objective in mind that Nestlé Portugal adopted Generix EDI and Electronic Invoicing solutions for electronic document transactions with retailers and other business partners.

“The use of EDI in Nestlé has significantly improved the documents and information exchange process with all customers with whom we implemented this system. As a result, the whole process has become faster, standardized, more agile and much safer, which often benefits the trust relationship between Nestlé and these customers… In addition, EDI has also helped reduce errors usually caused by manual processes and as a result we have reduced bureaucracy and costs,” Luís Silva IT – System Analyst/Business Analys Nestlé Portugal

The project in details

Order to dematerialize documents and facilitate information exchanges

In the late 90s Nestlé Portugal implemented the Generix EDI solution for the electronic transmission of documents – such as orders, invoices and delivery notes.

Through EDI it’s possible to exchange electronic documents, in a standard format, between the different information systems of the partners with whom Nestlé maintains commercial relations. This way, the company can quickly send and receive documents with its customers and suppliers, with maximum security, and the data is automatically integrated into its ERP. The whole process is carried out in 3 steps: document preparation, message translation into EDI format and documents transmission to the partner.

In 2006, the company took another step forward streamlining processes with the electronic invoicing solution implementation. This tool allowed Nestlé to improve the invoice handling process and increase productivity levels.

The confidence placed in Generix solutions, for more than two decades, proves the reliability and robustness of these tools over time. This demonstrates Nestlé’s Portugal innovative vision, which implemented, on time, its process digitalization and the modernization of information flows.

The post-pandemic context has emphasized the need of a digital transformation path and digitization process for the business competitiveness and efficiency.

Key benefits identified by Nestlé Portugal

• Acceleration of processes and greater proximity to customers and suppliers: the processes digitization, the speed of communication and the automation created for document processing and information flows has allowed Nestlé Portugal to gain speed and efficiency, as well as differentiation in the relationship with their stakeholders.
• Greater control over documents given the high information flows exchanged between Nestlé and its partners, it’s crucial to have solutions that allow them to obtain better control and visibility over incoming and outgoing files. This accuracy is provided by the EDI system.
• Less errors and conflicts: through processes automation, data enters directly into the company management system. This avoids typing errors (e.g. misplaced commas or inconsistencies in order quantities) which can result in increased costs, delays and are a potential source of conflicts.
• Optimization of team members’ time: Tasks that, in the past, were performed manually are nowautomatically performed thanks to the implementation of EDI and Electronic Invoicing solutions. As a result, the exchange and documents processing was accelerated, which allowed the company to gain time and efficiency.
• Cost reduction: the company no longer receives or sends out paper purchase orders or invoices, the documents are now sent directly into its system. This saves costs that previously had to be covered by printing, mailing and also storing/archiving paper.
• Environmental footprint reduction: Nestlé is committed to social responsibility and environmental sustainability issues. The implementation of this type of projects and solutions, allows the company to remove paper documentation and reduce its ecological footprint.

They are using our solutions

Find the full description of the solutions presented in this case study

• EDI Services
• Invoice Services