Eataly implements EDI, agentic AI into enterprise
Eataly is supporting growth by streamlining supply chain communications and implementing next-generation artificial intelligence.
The Italian-themed grocery and restaurant chain has accelerated growth from opening roughly one store every six years to opening 10 stores in a single year, causing its order and transaction volume to increase by more than 40% over two years. However, Eataly found the manual supply chain communications processes supporting this growth, which included emails, PDFs, paper, and WhatsApp messages, were no longer keeping pace.
To resolve issues with ineffective and incorrect supply chain communications, Eataly implemented the Cleo electronic data interchange (EDI) platform as it also migrated its ERP backbone to Microsoft Dynamics 365. Leveraging EDI transaction sets, Eataly achieved improvements in the following supply chain areas:
Purchase orders
Purchase orders now transmit automatically, and the person who placed the order can receive confirmation and exception details in approximately 30 minutes, down from a process that previously took days. That gives stores time to respond before delivery and helps keep shelves and kitchens stocked with the right products.
Vendor invoices
Eataly processes thousands of vendor invoices each month. Handling that volume manually required significant effort from the accounts payable team and could delay both invoice processing and vendor payments. The retailer implemented EDI invoicing, enabling vendor invoices fto low directly into Microsoft Dynamics 365. The ERP automatically compares each invoice against the related purchase order and receipt. When the quantities and prices match, the invoice can be posted automatically and the payment process initiated without manual intervention.
Transaction management
A failed transaction could be caused by anything from an unexpected character in a vendor file to an overnight change in Eataly's ERP. Eataly needed ongoing monitoring and support,but was initially concerned that moving to a managed-services model might mean losing visibility into its own transactions.
Cleo Transaction Monitoring and Management (TM&M) services monitors Eataly's transactions and provides a one-hour response when an issue occurs. When a document fails, Eataly receives a ticket identifying the affected document, the job ID, and the action required. A dedicated project manager helps coordinate support requests and prioritize issues.
As transaction volume and onboarding needs grew, Eataly upgraded to TM&M Plus, giving the company additional services capacity for new partners, mapping changes, certificates, and workflow enhancements.
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In addition, with EDI and ERP integration in place, Eataly is now looking at how agentic AI can turn its operational data into faster, more proactive decisions to ensure products do not expire before they can reach shelves or be sold online.
To better identify which lots are approaching expiration, how often quality issues were occurring, and whether those patterns could be traced back to specific products or vendors, Eataly has begun building an AI agent that can review active inventory in its warehouse management system and flag products approaching expiration.
The agent is also designed to analyze how frequently those issues occur, which vendors the products came from, and the overall quality of the inventory in the WMS. The goal is to give Eataly's employees earlier insight into inventory risks while freeing them to focus on more valuable work.
