Lindt & Sprüngli GmbH
Customer & challenge
Lindt & Sprüngli has been enchanting the world with its chocolate for over 175 years. The traditional Swiss company is a global leader in premium chocolate, with production at 12 sites across Europe and the USA. The company sells its products through 32 branches, 500 stores, and over 100 independent distributors worldwide. With more than 14,000 employees, Lindt & Sprüngli achieved sales of $5.7 billion in 2022. In Aachen, Germany, the chocolate maker uses a single IT infrastructure, which includes SAP and 30+ other third-party systems.
They used various platforms to exchange data between SAP and the outside systems, some of which are cloud solutions and others on-premises.
When we first started speaking with representatives of Lindt & Sprüngli, they were struggling to manage multiple data exchange platforms. Simon Carls, an IT Administrator at Lindt & Sprüngli, noted: “Our intention was to create a central interface for data exchange between SAP and third-party systems.” This interface would not only be able to integrate between the many platforms, but also support automated data transfers to and from SAP.
“yunIO provides us with the greatest possible transparency for various interfaces between SAP and third-party systems.”
Manuel Henkes, SAP Support HR, Lindt & Sprüngli
Solution with yunIO
To create a centralized solution, they needed both input and output from SAP to the outside systems. Fortunately, they came across yunIO – a no-code solution that makes it easy to create SAP processes for cloud and web apps. yunIO provides flexibility and a user-friendly interface, and most importantly offers an encrypted connection which is a basic requirement for exchanging sensitive data.
After completing a proof of concept for an HR scenario, Carls and Henkes were impressed by yunIO’s ability to store different authorization concepts for connections between SAP and their many outside systems. Lindt needed a reliable way to transfer data between their SAP and their workforce management software for optimal staffing in production plants and retail stores.
To assess if yunIO could handle this transfer, Lindt coordinated the details of system communication between the software partner and Theobald Software. The requirement was that the data transfer between SAP and the workforce management software be done in JSON format, which is supported by yunIO. After this assessment period, Lindt evaluated yunIO and developed the automated data exchange between SAP and the workforce management software.
Henkes told us: “yunIO is very lean and easy to use. The only time I needed support was when I was attempting to define a web service in yunIO. Theobald Software responded extremely quickly and helped us resolve our specific issues.”
He went on to explain: “When our third-party partner contacts our web service, information from SAP – such as location needs, time stamps, and absences – is sent to the local server’s workforce management software. In return, scheduled shifts and employee absences are sent back to SAP.”
Challenge: Finding a central connector for data exchange between SAP and around 30 third-party systems
Solution: yunIO
Installation time: Low effort
Added Value: Transparency around data transfers; simplified interface; implemented new documentation and automation protocols
Less effort, more transparency
Lindt uses yunIO to work less hard and gain more transparency. Henkes told us, “yunIO helped us make a consistent labelling system for interfaces during our collaboration. We have records of the interface used and the SAP function module and third-party system involved in the data exchange.”
