Bristow Group Inc. is one of the world’s largest providers of helicopter services. The first civil helicopter company to work in the oil and gas industry, Bristow has earned an international reputation for speed of response and quality of service. Bristow Group Inc. is a truly global organization, working from facilities around the world to offer a wide-ranging array of services. The Bristow Group, through its brand names Air Logistics and Bristow Helicopters, provides helicopter transportation, maintenance, search and rescue, and related services to the offshore oil and gas industry as well as other business sectors.
“Cooper Software took the load away completely and worked with our users and external vendors to drive the project to completion. This was a project we had wanted to progress for a couple of years - Cooper Software’s focus and ability got it up and running inside three months. During that time, progress reports were plentiful and exemplary which built up trust very quickly.”
Director of IT
Bristow Group required a flexible solution to meet contractual commitments with key suppliers. Each aircraft has as many as 20,000 parts and the Group has over 400 aircraft, so the manual processes created a huge administrative workload. In addition to the significant resources required to execute the process, the orders were often misplaced or miskeyed. The solution was required automate their purchasing process using Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), and also integrate EDI with the current ERP solution to reduce manual intervention.
Cooper Software, Europe’s largest independent provider of products, consulting and support for IFS users, utilized their common business to business purchase framework and create an easy to use web-based user interface. Cooper Software assessed each of Bristow’s key vendor systems and developed a framework to provide a common front-end that was accessed directly from the ERP Purchase Order, Requisition and Inventory screens.
The front-end linked to a single common engine with individual connectors for each supplier system enabling Bristow purchase orders to be processed electronically by each vendor. Bespoke functionality allows Bristow Group to manage variable requirements example: shipping requirements-parts prices and delivery lead times.
Extensible architecture to enable other Suppliers to establish EDI processing quicker.
• 500% operational efficiency improvement
• Meet contractual obligations leading to a £2m saving due to an improved discount level.
• Seamlessly integrated into Bristow Group’s ERP system.
• Orders placed directly into supplier systems with a single click of the mouse rather than the 8-15 manual steps that it typically took.
• Full audit trail to enable Bristow to locate each order electronically within the system and to know exactly who placed the order, when and where
• Other suppliers can hook into the EDI services provided at a fraction of the cost and time that it took to establish links with the original supplier companies.