Leveraging New Sales Channel with EDI Integration

Franco Manufacturing transitioned from a legacy ERP environment to a custom EDI integration from TrueCommerce.

Chika Milan Adobe Stock Shopping Bags
chika_milan - Adobe Stock - Shopping Bags.

Founded in 1952, family-owned Franco Manufacturing has created decorative and innovative home furnishing décor products for three generations. Among the top U.S.-based home textile companies, Franco specializes in high-quality bedding, bath and clothing products featuring characters under many leading brand names, including Disney, DreamWorks, Nickelodeon and Warner Bros.

The forward-looking company is committed to maintaining its competitive leadership in today’s omnichannel retail landscape. It sells products through department stores, specialty retailers and mass market retailers as well as online through a variety of marketplaces.

Successfully selling direct-to-consumer in the highly competitive, performance-driven online space has been a significant step for this established business, which traditionally has focused on larger volume retail orders.

To keep pace with its growth, Franco Manufacturing recently transitioned from a legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) environment, which included a custom EDI integration that it maintained in-house. The CGS BlueCherry ERP system from CGS includes EDI capabilities as part of the offering. To make the EDI integration with online marketplaces built on Shopify and other e-commerce platforms, Franco Manufacturing turned to TrueCommerce B2BGateway. Keeping sales on pace during the pandemic. According to Flor Pintor-Dong, compliance manager, Franco’s TrueCommerce B2BGateway integration with Shopify sites went live in December 2020.

“Even when everything was shut down due to COVID, our big customers like Walmart and Target were still open, so we still had good sales,” says Pintor-Dong. “We have also expanded a lot into the dot-com realm, and now those consumer orders are keeping us busy, too.” When Franco receives a Shopify order from a consumer, its TrueCommerce B2BGateway solution converts it to an EDI 850 purchase order and exports it to the BlueCherry ERP system, where it can be processed like any other EDI order. TrueCommerce B2BGateway also keeps tracking data and order status in sync between BlueCherry and Shopify-powered marketplaces, based on EDI 856 advance ship notices imported from BlueCherry.

Franco ships each online order directly to the buyer from their warehouse in South Carolina. Thanks to the Shopify integration, the manufacturer is better able to meet today’s high consumer expectations, including fast shipping and timely order status.

Support is “always there”

Pintor-Dong has been impressed with the results she’s seen from TrueCommerce B2BGateway support. “The support is phenomenal—everything we need is always there,” says Pintor-Dong. “To me, it doesn’t matter how beautiful your software is if you’re not there when we need support. With TrueCommerce B2BGateway, we love the support. If we have a question, we just send an email and they follow up right away.” Comprehensive testing before moving the solution to production has also paid off. “Everything was tested thoroughly, so once we started taking orders there have been very few issues; nothing major at all,” notes Pintor-Dong. Seamless, “no-touch” integration allows management by exception

Another benefit of the TrueCommerce B2BGateway integration with Shopify is a seamless, hands-off user experience. Order data flows in and out of BlueCherry without user intervention.

“We’ve only recently started with the Shopify channel, and sales are getting better and better each day,” reports Pintor-Dong. “The additional orders are not a problem at all because everything goes straight to and from the ERP.”

Delivering on the customer promise

What has impressed Pintor-Dong most about TrueCommerce B2BGateway is the ability to follow through and deliver what was promised, even when difficulties arose.

TrueCommerce B2BGateway delivers what they promise,” Pintor-Dong offers. “I’ve worked with companies that, when you hire them, they say you can go live by this time, and that they’ll do this and that for you. But at the end of the day, there’s nothing. You guys delivered it perfectly. I’m happy to recommend TrueCommerce B2BGateway for that reason especially.”

 

 

Companies in this article
Latest