March 29, 2019 Transforming the Supply Chain

March 28, 2019

By Yegor Kuznetsov

Susquehanna Glass onboarded a new customer and immediately faced two challenges: an extremely large order volume and highly specific labeling requirements. The legacy solution couldn’t cope with the problem, so the family-owned glass decorating company embarked on an intensive search and adopted TrueCommerce Pack & Ship – a solution that could go really granular to meets its unique needs.

Susquehanna Glass is proud of its rich history of “making things personal” for over a century. Expertise in a range of etching, screening and engraving processes on glass, metal and other media, combined with a proven drop-shipping program, enable this leading gift vendor to meet the volume, quality and service demands of major retail brands. They also serve distributors and smaller retailers in the wine/beer, hospitality and specialty gift industries, and leverage multiple online channels including top marketplaces like Amazon, Overstock.com and Fanatics.com.

Susquehanna Glass began the digital transformation of its supply chain processes in 2016, when they implemented TrueCommerce integrated EDI for Sage 100 ERP to replace a homegrown, FTP-based solution. Since then, the company has been integrating and automating more of its commerce and fulfillment processes within the TrueCommerce Foundry platform, including TrueCommerce Pack & Ship and the Scheduler add-on for EDI.

Susquehanna Glass went live with TrueCommerce Pack & Ship in January 2019. According to Todd Parsons, Controller, the original plans for rolling out the solution changed radically when the company onboarded a new customer that presented two major challenges: an extremely large order volume combined with highly specific and nonstandard labeling requirements.

Handling Quick Turnaround—In More Ways than One

“After researching the offering during and after the TrueCommerce Connections 2018 user conference, we decided to purchase TrueCommerce Pack & Ship later in 2018,” Mr. Parsons explains. “Then we picked up this new customer and our initial priorities shifted 180 degrees—from implementing Pack & Ship for all of our current customers to making the solution work at maximum efficiency so we can drop-ship the same item to 4,000 buyers per day for that one new customer.”

Besides driving a high order volume, the new trading partner requires a 3-by-5-inch label on its boxes. This was a paramount necessity for the initial Pack & Ship go-live.

“Such a label doesn’t exist in the conventional shipping world,” Mr. Parsons notes. “Fortunately, TrueCommerce graciously did what it took to support those nonstandard shipping labels.”

Scaling to Handle Massive Order Throughput

TrueCommerce Pack & Ship is able to process orders end-to-end in a fraction of the time it used to take Susquehanna Glass’ outgoing shipping solution.

“When we first started with this new customer, we were shipping 400 to 500 orders per day,” Mr. Parsons states. “With our old shipping system, it took almost four minutes to get one label per unit. Needless to say, that wasn’t feasible.”

TrueCommerce Pack & Ship is able to go from a sales order in Sage 100 to a printed, drop-ship label in well under 30 seconds.

“Once customized rules are in place, we just scan the work order, it pops up on the Pack & Ship screen, we click ‘Quick Ship’ and out comes the label,” adds Mr. Parsons.

The solution’s ease of use helps to further expedite the shipping process. For example, moving the EDI 940 Warehouse Shipping Order and EDI 945 Warehouse Shipping Advice documents between Sage 100 ERP to Pack & Ship is also automated, using the TrueCommerce Scheduler EDI add-on.

“Pack & Ship is very easy for our staff to use and does everything they need it to do,” Mr. Parsons asserts.

Now that it is meeting its new, high-volume customer needs, Susquehanna Glass plans to replicate this success with other trading partners.

More Connected—Because Commerce Complexities Shouldn’t Keep You from Keeping Up with Demand

The original business driver for the Pack & Ship purchase was to optimize shipping efficiency by eliminating a time-consuming, manual step in the company’s order management process.

Mr. Parson explains: “Our products are frequently customized, so we have special requirements for item numbers. For example, a mug with a one-letter monogram does not have a unique item number for each letter of the alphabet. Instead, we assign an item number to the mug itself, and the monogrammed letter is tracked by a personalization field.”

The customization created unique challenges for the commerce network.

“When the customer places an order for two of the same item, but different personalizations, our previous solution consolidated them as an identical item,” summarizes Mr. Parsons. “That confused the system. Now, TrueCommerce Pack & Ship allows items to be differentiated and reported accurately on our EDI ASN.”

TrueCommerce Support has played a key role in helping Susquehanna Glass meet its unique business growth challenges. Unlike the outgoing shipping system, TrueCommerce Pack & Ship can be configured to consolidate items at the line item level within the order, which eliminates this problem.

To Do Business in Every Direction you’ve Got to be More Supported and TrueCommerce Goes the “Extra Mile”

The TrueCommerce support team successfully took Susquehanna Glass through this challenge.

“The people I’m working with on this program are some of the best people that I’ve ever worked with,” asserts Mr. Parsons. “TrueCommerce has been willing to go the extra mile and has consistently come through on every issue that we’ve encountered. I have the highest regard for TrueCommerce as a company and for its solutions, and I would recommend TrueCommerce Pack & Ship to any business like ours.”

Yegor Kuznetsov is a former international news agency editor and a marketing communications veteran who loves telling customer success stories. Over the last 20 years, he has been working for an array of dynamic technology companies, most recently with TrueCommerce, a global provider of trading partner connectivity, integration and unified commerce solutions.

You can reach Yegor at Yegor.kuznetsov@truecommerce.com.

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