Eataly Customer Snapshot: From 15 Years Without EDI to Real-Time Supply Chain Orchestration in Three Months

During a fireside chat, Antonino Marano, Solutions Architect at Eataly, joined Cleo CMO Tushar Patel to explain how the company modernized those processes while undertaking a major ERP transformation. Eataly implemented its first EDI solution with Cleo while simultaneously migrating from a 15-year-old legacy ERP to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and Finance.

With support from Cleo's services team, including dedicated Microsoft Dynamics 365 expertise, Eataly moved from vendor selection through mapping, supplier onboarding, ERP integration, and live EDI transactions in just three months.

Together, these modernization efforts laid the foundation for a more orchestrated supply chain, giving Eataly greater automation, visibility, and control across its vendor relationships, from purchase order through invoice and payment.

Here are five takeaways from the conversation.

1. Choosing a Partner Who Already Knew D365

Eataly's existing ERP implementation partner wasn't equipped to take on EDI at the same time.

The Challenge: When Antonino asked Eataly's ERP implementation partner to also support the EDI rollout, the answer was no — adding it to their scope would delay the ERP migration across Eataly's stores. "There was a red flag for me," Marano said.

The Fix: Eataly brought in Cleo specifically for its Microsoft Dynamics 365 expertise. "I want to speak with someone that knows D365 SCM," Marano said. "I don't have time right now to explain how the solution works for D365 Microsoft." From there, the timeline moved fast: a pre-sale meeting within a week of scouting Cleo, fully onboarded with the Cleo team within two weeks, then straight into mapping and deployment using Cleo's native Microsoft add-on.

The Result: Eataly went live with 850 (purchase order), 855 (purchase order acknowledgment), and 810 (invoice) transactions, fully integrated with D365, all within the same three-month window as its ERP migration.

2. Getting Real-Time Information to the People Who Actually Need It

Grocery managers and chefs are the ones placing Eataly's orders — but they aren't sitting at a laptop logged into the ERP.

The Challenge: Before Cleo, sending a purchase order meant manually generating a PDF from the old ERP and emailing it to the right vendor contact, a process made worse whenever a vendor's sales rep changed. Once an order was sent, the people who'd placed it had no way to check its status without logging into the ERP, which wasn't realistic for someone on the store floor or behind a counter. Vendor substitutions were common too. "Working in food, we have a million types of tomatoes," Marano said. "Sometimes they don't send the tomatoes that we require. They send a different tomato."

The Fix: Eataly implemented 850 and 855 transactions so purchase orders and confirmations transmit automatically, without manual PDFs or emails. Cleo also built custom notifications for item changes, price changes, and shortages, emailed directly to whoever placed the order, allowing them to check updates from their phone.

The Result: 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 store teams time to respond before delivery and helps keep shelves and kitchens stocked with the right products.

3. Automating Invoices From Receipt to Payment

Faster ordering created value for Eataly's stores, but the automation did not stop when products arrived. Eataly also redesigned how vendor invoices move through accounts payable.

The Challenge: Eataly processes thousands of vendor invoices each month. Handling that volume manually would require significant effort from the accounts payable team and could delay both invoice processing and vendor payments.

The Fix: Eataly implemented EDI 810 invoices so vendor invoices flow 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.

The Result: "In the moment that our vendors send us the EDI invoice and it gets imported into the system, we can go through the entire process in an hour," Marano said. That speed, paired with Eataly’s new EDI capability, gave the company an opportunity to revisit its vendor contracts and reduce certain service-related costs. Some vendors have gone further, offering Eataly 2% to 3% off their contracts simply for moving onto EDI.

4. Scaling Managed Services Without Losing Control

Once Eataly's EDI workflows were live, the next challenge was keeping them running while continuing to add vendors, integrations, and new capabilities, all while maintaining visibility and control.

The Challenge: 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 the team was initially concerned that moving to a managed-services model might mean losing visibility into its own transactions.

The Fix: Eataly started using Cleo's Transaction Monitoring and Management services (TM&M), which monitors Eataly's transactions and provides a one-hour response SLA 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. "The main reason was because it worked," Marano said. "We saw that this solution could bring value to our business."

The Result: Eataly can rely on Cleo to monitor and manage day-to-day EDI operations while retaining direct access to Cleo Integration Cloud (CIC). "If I needed to go inside CIC, and export all the transactions related to a specific period, per invoice, I can still do it," said Marano. "We still have full control and visibility into our transactions. It's fundamental for us." That blended model allows Eataly's team to stay informed and in control without having to manage every transaction or platform change itself.

5. Building AI Agents That Support the Team, Not Replace It

With EDI and ERP integration in place, Eataly is now looking at how AI agents can turn its operational data into faster, more proactive decisions.

The Challenge: Managing fresh food across warehouses and eCommerce operations requires constant attention to product quality and expiration dates. Eataly needed a better way to identify which lots were approaching expiration, how often quality issues were occurring, and whether those patterns could be traced back to specific products or vendors.

The Fix: Eataly began 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 Result: The goal is to give Eataly's employees earlier insight into inventory risks while freeing them to focus on more valuable work. For Marano, that philosophy extends beyond this one use case: "The AI agent should not replace the employee, but should give them a great improvement to go to the next level," he said. "You have an AI agent do work that you already learned, so in this way you can move to the next step."

The Path Towards Supply Chain Orchestration

Eataly's transformation shows what becomes possible when EDI modernization is treated as more than a connectivity project.

Fifteen years without an EDI solution gave way to a three-month implementation, integrated directly with Microsoft Dynamics 365.

Days-long order confirmations gave way to real-time visibility reaching the people who actually place the orders.

Manual invoice reconciliation gave way to vendor payment in an hour.

A team wary of losing control found a managed services partnership that gave them more of it, not less.

AI agents designed to identify quality and expiration risks earlier.

Together, these changes moved Eataly beyond simply digitizing transactions and toward supply chain orchestration, where data moves automatically between systems and people, and where issues surface before they become problems.

If your organization is navigating similar growth, or managing an ERP migration and EDI modernization at the same time, explore more customer stories like this one, or reach out to sales@cleo.com to talk through your own supply chain.

If your team is working through a similar scenario of EDI modernization or ERP integration, reach out to our team at sales@cleo.com, request a personalized demo, or check out some prerecorded demos. We’d love to help.