EDI Integration and Platform Development for a Global Logistics Leader 

A client since

2020

Industry

Transport & Logistics

Services/ Products

Dedicated Teams

Our client is one of Europe’s leading third-party logistics providers – a family-owned business founded in 1967, with €1.7 billion in annual revenue and over 28,000 collaborators operating across 14 countries on 3 continents. The company handles warehousing, co-packing, transport, and omnichannel fulfillment for major brands in retail, food and beverage, beauty, healthcare, and manufacturing.

Running logistics at this scale means managing a technology environment that is both vast and business-critical: EDI connections with hundreds of trading partners, a supply chain management platform used across the company’s international network, and a warehouse integration layer that ties together everything from inventory systems and autostores to autonomous guided vehicles.

2020: An EDI function that couldn’t keep up

The client’s EDI operations – the data exchange infrastructure connecting them to customers and carriers – were being handled by an external provider that charged per deliverable. That made it expensive and slow to scale: as the volume and variety of integrations grew, so did the cost and the wait. The client needed a team that could work faster, build up institutional knowledge over time, and cost less as the scope expanded.

2022: A platform the business had outgrown

As the EDI partnership deepened, a separate problem came into focus. The supply chain management platform the client used for transport and carrier operations was running on aging technology, carrying years of unmaintained code, and had never had a proper front-end or UX practice behind it. User adoption had stalled at below 30%. The vendor responsible for maintaining it was no longer keeping pace, and the client decided it was time for a change.

2023: Warehouse integrations stuck in the past

Around the same time, a third challenge was emerging in the warehouse. The integration layer connecting the Warehouse Management System to third-party software and automation equipment was being built directly inside the production system, using a proprietary language with a shrinking pool of specialists. Every new integration – whether for a new software tool or a piece of automation hardware – meant working in a live environment. It was slow, risky, and increasingly hard to sustain as warehouse automation technology kept moving forward.

EDI: Replacing a project-based model with a dedicated team

The partnership started through our Strasbourg office, which had an existing relationship with the client and recognized that our EDI expertise was a good match for what they needed. After a technical assessment, we began with two senior EDI mapping specialists in June 2020.

Within six months, the team had grown to five. Operating as a fully embedded part of the client’s EDI function – rather than an external vendor billing per deliverable – the team built up context quickly, moved faster, and cost less at scale. By the end of 2022, the team had reached seven specialists.

The scope has grown steadily alongside the headcount. Two of our team members have since moved into project manager roles, exploitation support and on-call duty were added to the team’s responsibilities in 2024. What started as a fix for a slow, expensive external arrangement has become a core part of how the client runs its EDI operations.

Supply Chain Management Platform: Taking over and moving forward

In late 2022, the client brought the supply chain management platform to Proxiad SEE. The platform handles transport management, order tracking, carrier coordination and invoicing – central to the company’s day-to-day operations.

After a structured knowledge transfer, we assembled a team around what the platform needed: senior PHP and React developers, a UX/UI designer, and a Scrum Master to bring proper delivery structure. A QA engineer joined in 2024 as the workload grew.

The work ran on two tracks. Technically, the team refactored significant portions of the codebase and migrated the platform to current versions of its core frameworks, making it faster, more secure, and easier to build on. On the product side, we introduced UX practice to the platform for the first time – conducting user research with representatives from over 10 countries, building a design system of over 100 components, and redesigning the interface around how logistics operators actually use it day to day.

This team was also the first within the client’s organization to adopt Docker and Agile delivery practices, bringing more structure and predictability to a product that had been drifting.

The results were significant. Platform adoption grew from under 30% to 67%. Deployment times dropped by a factor of 10. The platform now runs on a modern, maintainable stack that the team continues to iterate on.

Warehouse Development Platform: Building for modern automation

In September 2022, we started a third team supporting the client’s warehouse development platform – the integration layer between the Warehouse Management System and the software and automation equipment on the warehouse floor.

The core issue was that all integration work happened inside the production system itself, in a proprietary language with limited specialist availability. That made every new integration slow and risky, with no real path to scaling as warehouse automation evolved.

We started with two full-stack developers and rebuilt the integration layer as a modular API platform, moving all development outside the production environment. New automation solutions – whether a new AGV supplier or a robotic picking system – can now be connected through clean, reusable modules without touching live systems. The stack has since been re-platformed from .NET to Angular, TypeScript and Nest.js to align with the client’s broader architecture direction.

EDI: Replacing a project-based model with a dedicated team

What started as a single EDI engagement in 2020 has grown into a partnership across three technology domains, now entering its seventh year. 

• EDI team grew from 2 to 7 specialists, with two internal promotions to project manager level and expanded responsibilities including on-call and support

• Supply chain platform adoption grew from under 30% to 67% 

• 10x reduction in deployment time following the platform rebuild 

• Design system of 100+ components covering over 85% of user workflows, built on user research across 10+ countries 

• Warehouse integration platform rebuilt from a proprietary, production-coupled setup to a modern modular stack

Each of our three teams started with a narrow brief and grew as trust built and scope expanded. The client didn’t come to us with a transformation roadmap – the transformation happened because we were close enough to see what needed to change, and trusted enough to act on it.