Building a scalable trading partner capability with Netix Flow “it just works”.
Camira is a privately owned UK textile group that designs and manufactures textiles for commercial interiors including workplace, hospitality and education and for public transport in rail, bus and coach. As more customers started to request exchanging commercial documents electronically, Camira partnered with Cegedim Business Solutions and the Netix Flow platform to facilitate these digital transactions, with no interruptions to their supply chain and workflow.
Founded in 1974 as Camborne Fabrics, its heritage dates back to 1783 through acquisitions, and after nearly ten years as a subsidiary of Interface (the international manufacturer of textile modular floor coverings) it completed a management buy-out in 2006; today it has annual turnover of over £80 million, employs around 600 people, sells in approximately 75 countries and produces over 6 million metres per year, with UK headquarters, manufacturing in the UK and Lithuania, offices and showrooms across Europe, North America, Australia and China, plus a global network of agents and distributors; it has also been a pioneer in sustainable textiles, launching its first recycled fabrics in the 1990s and later innovating fabrics made from natural wool and plant fibres such as nettles, flax and hemp.
Camira Fabrics began receiving requests from a small number of customers to “trade via EDI”, exchanging commercial documents (such as purchase orders, order acknowledgements and dispatch notifications) in structured electronic formats rather than via email, spreadsheets or portals.
Investing for the long-term
At the time, Camira didn’t offer EDI as a capability, and the team faced two immediate challenges: a practical learning curve around what EDI trading would require, and a strategic question about whether it was worth investing internal time and cost into a capability that might not become material at scale. With limited in-house expertise in EDI messaging standards and the support for building and maintaining an in-house service felt like a high-risk commitment, particularly when future demand for EDI from Camira’s customer base was uncertain. As Rick Loughrey, Head of BI and IT Development, put it, it wasn’t simply a case of “switching on EDI”; it meant understanding a messaging technology stack Camira Fabrics didn’t currently have, and building it “from the ground up”without confidence in the long-term application and usage.
Against that backdrop, Camira evaluated three digital supply chain management suppliers, with cost and delivery approach being decisive. They needed a partner who could absorb complexity quickly, minimise disruption to the business, and provide confidence that EDI could be introduced without creating a new internal workload or a brittle, bespoke integration that would become expensive to operate. They selected Cegedim Business Services (CBS) and the Netix Flow platform and established what became a long-term partnership spanning roughly a decade.
Netix Flow “it just worked”
Netix Flow enabled Camira to adopt EDI in a staged, low-risk way, starting with a single customer and a small set of message types, then expanding as business need increased. A critical shift occurred once the connection was live: “once in place, it just worked.” That stability mattered because it turned EDI from a perceived technical project into a dependable operational capability. Rather than Camira maintaining mapping logic, chasing errors, or manually reprocessing documents to fit internal systems, Netix Flow’s purpose is to translate and normalise incoming EDI messages into ERP-compatible data before it reaches internal systems, applying validation and enrichment so that transactions flow cleanly and consistently.
Practically, Netix Flow supports the EDI standards many established trading partners still depend on (such as EDIFACT, X12 and TRADACOMS) and can also support API-based connections where needed, providing flexibility as partners modernise at different speeds. That matters in real commercial environments where supplier and customer networks are mixed: some organisations are deeply invested in legacy EDI, others expect more modern, real-time integration approaches, and many are somewhere in between.
For Camira, it meant their EDI capability could remain compatible with long-standing customer requirements today, while still offering a pathway to evolve without ripping and replacing infrastructure later.
Going beyond field mapping
A major differentiator in how Netix Flow operates is that it goes beyond simple “field mapping”. Instead, it applies a configurable transformation and data-enrichment layer (CBS describes this as modular microservices and a pluggable automation layer within Netix Flow) to ensure the data is not only correctly translated but also fit for downstream business processes. In real terms, this can include copying and mapping product codes between buyer and seller formats to prevent misidentification; defaulting missing tax, delivery or header details to maintain completeness; converting units of measure and currency codes so quantities and pricing align with internal rules; calculating totals, discounts, and VAT at line level; and referencing original orders or delivery notes across related documents to maintain traceability from order to fulfilment to invoice. In summary, it does a lot of comprehensive work in the background so that clients forget that it’s there.
These capabilities reduce the most common causes of EDI friction: exceptions created when documents are syntactically “valid” but operationally unusable, mismatches between customer and supplier item masters, and missing or inconsistent references that make reconciliation difficult.
Onboarding made simple
In Camira’s case, the EDI rollout followed a pragmatic maturity curve. The first customer went live using Netix Flow for purchase orders and order acknowledgements, a foundational order-processing loop that remains in place to this day. Around 12 months later, Camira onboarded a second customer, and the process was “fairly slick” the second time around, demonstrating that once the initial patterns and governance were established, expansion became repeatable rather than reinvented each time. A few years later, Camira required the addition of another customer with different requirements, ASNs / dispatch notifications, expanding digital visibility into the shipping stage and enabling tighter alignment between what was shipped and what the customer expected to receive.
Over the ten-year relationship, the day-to-day experience continues to improve as the technology develops. Rick highlighted continual improvement updates in the portal, a really important factor in providing operational confidence. In practice, a strong portal experience supports auditability and troubleshooting by making it straightforward to review document status, check what has been received or sent, and understand where an issue might have occurred (for example, whether it’s a partner-side problem, a validation rule failure, or a duplicate document scenario). It also helps stakeholders outside of IT, such as customer service or supply chain roles, to get visibility without needing deep technical access.
Support and resolution, when needed, if at all!
Just as important is what happens when things don’t go to plan. In EDI environments, the operational cost often isn’t in “normal flow”, it’s in exceptions, disputes and changes. Camira’s experience is that issues are “very rare”, and when they do occur, it is easy to identify a likely cause; and if further investigation is needed, support and resolution are “quick and straightforward”, with fast response from the CBS team.
This directly aligns with a key benefit of the Netix Flow model: exception handling and validation designed to prevent bad or duplicate data from reaching the ERP, including holding or archiving duplicates and removing invalid or zero-value lines before they can create downstream posting failures. When these controls are applied upstream, organisations avoid the classic “EDI tax” of manual clean-up and rework, and they protect finance and fulfilment processes from delays.
Change management that isn’t painful
The most commercially meaningful proof-point for Camira came when a customer required a change to the order acknowledgement process. Change management is where many ERP systems (operationally rigid in nature) and EDI programmes struggle because it requires coordination across two technical teams, agreement on revised specifications, testing cycles, and controlled go-live planning. Rick described this as historically “the painful part”, largely because you depend on the customer’s technical teams and timelines. In this instance, he was impressed with how CBS handled the situation: They took ownership, managed communications with the customer, ensured testing happened correctly on their side, and made sure the change met both customer and Camira requirements.
The change went live on time and without issues, converting what could have been a high-friction, resource-draining activity into a controlled, low-effort outcome for Camira.
End results
The end result is a stable EDI capability that supports customer trading requirements without becoming a constant internal distraction. Camira has maintained core EDI processes with long-standing customers for years, expanded to additional partners and document types when needed, and benefited from platform improvements that make visibility and oversight easier. Issues are infrequent, resolution is fast when required, and critical customer-driven changes have been delivered with strong governance and minimal burden on Camira’s team. As Rick summarised, it is “very rare”he needs to log in, precisely because the platform is stable and “it just works.”