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Case Study: A Smart 3PL Connector for IslandSurf

by Celigo
March 17, 2010

Overview

An online retail company specializing in branded apparel, clothing, and equipment, IslandSurf had chosen NetSuite as its business management solution. IslandSurf needed to implement a solution that automated the myriad of manual processes necessary to work with a 3rd party warehouse. They wanted to free up employees’ time to focus on more value-add activities and provide customers with a shorter wait time for orders to be fulfilled.

IslandSurf turned to Celigo for help. Celigo implemented a fully automated, bi-directional integration with IslandSurf’s 3rd party warehouse (AtLast Fulfillment); supporting AtLast Fulfillment’s XML file format. This integration:

  • Pushes sales orders to AtLast Fulfillment.
  • Imports shipment confirmations into NetSuite.
  • Imports Inventory Adjustments into NetSuite.
  • Provides multi-location fulfillment routing.

IslandSurf realized numerous benefits from Celigo’s solution – including:

  • Order turnaround time decreased by at least 50%.
  • Man-hours were reduced by 20%.
  • Customer satisfaction increased.

Challenges

IslandSurf had selected NetSuite as its software platform and knew that they could not implement NetSuite without a solid 3PL solution. They required a solution that would automate their 3rd party warehouse processes to better serve their customers and be more efficient.

As it was, IslandSurf spent much time and energy manually doing the following:

  • flag orders that need to be sent to AtLast Fulfillment
  • export just those orders
  • cancel any items on the order that shouldn’t be fulfilled at AtLast Fulfillment
  • track and manually update the sales orders once they were fulfilled

Solution

Celigo’s 3PL solution provides IslandSurf with a fully automated, bi-directional integration with AtLast Fulfillment. Supporting AtLast Fulfillment’s XML file format, Celigo puts and grabs files off an FTP site, runs logic against the orders and fulfillments, and pushes this data into NetSuite.

In addition to the standard 3PL solution, Celigo implemented a custom SuiteScript that allows IslandSurf to rank locations in order of fulfillment priority. For a given order, Celigo’s solution determines the fulfillment preferences and tries to commit inventory from a single location. As necessary, the solution splits the fulfillment across locations, including AtLast Fulfillment. Furthermore, if a backorder is necessary, Celigo’s solution assigns the items to ship from the default backorder location.

With Celigo’s combined 3PL and custom SuiteScript solution, IslandSurf no longer manually flags and splits orders to be partially fulfilled or fulfilled via different locations. Celigo’s solution does this for them – only sending the necessary items to AtLast Fulfillment.

Being in retail, IslandSurf processes a high volume of transactions each day. With Celigo’s 3PL solution, over 80,000 orders have been processed successfully in this automated fashion.

When asked what his favorite aspect of the solution is, Kelly Izer, COO of IslandSurf, said, “The headache factor – there isn’t one. It’s seamless. It just works!” Additionally, Kelly also appreciates the ease of use when it comes to status checking and troubleshooting. Using the Integration Dashboard that comes with Celigo’s 3PL solution, Kelly can easily see when the integration ran (every hour), how many orders were processed, and if there is an issue, what the issue is.

The Bottom Line

The benefits and returns that IslandSurf realizes from Celigo’s 3PL are numerous.

Order turnaround time decreased by at least 50%

  • Prior to the Celigo 3PL solution, since it took IslandSurf so much time to send orders to AtLast Fulfillment, they could only send orders once per day.
  • With Celigo’s solution, they now send orders to the warehouse every hour, decreasing delivery time to customers Man-hours were reduced by 20%
  • IslandSurf was able to repurpose employees’ time towards more value-add activities, since orders no longer have to manually flagged, sent, tracked, and updated. The Celigo solution has saved hundreds of hours for IslandSurf.
  • Additionally, IslandSurf did not need to hire someone to move orders back and forth during peak seasons

All in all, IslandSurf finds the Celigo 3PL solution integral to their business, enabling them to focus on growing their business and further increasing customer satisfaction.

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