Case Study: Largest Food Service Distributing Company achieves fast, automated supplier data import and transformation with Astera Software's Centerprise

Major Food Services Distribution Network Uses Centerprise to Import and Transform Supplier Data Into Company System

The largest food‑service distribution cooperative in the U.S.—serving over 650 shareholder companies in 900+ locations with $31B in collective sales—had trouble importing supplier files that arrived in many custom spreadsheet formats. IT director Bill Ilmer was spending hours manually translating supplier status codes and customer identifiers into the company’s central system, a tedious, error‑prone task that diverted time from core rebate processing.

They implemented Astera Centerprise Data Integrator, using visual drag‑and‑drop mappings, static lookups for code translations, and database lookups to match supplier IDs to customers. After an initial setup for each supplier, Ilmer runs transformations from the command line (or a double‑click batch file), eliminating manual spreadsheet work, speeding rebate processing, and providing a cost‑effective, user‑friendly solution.