Founded in 1999, Pearhead is a global lifestyle and gift brand with over 800 products in the baby, pet and wedding categories. Its products are currently sold in over 1,000 stores in 13 countries, as well as through online marketplaces and its own branded web store.
To thrive in this highly competitive space takes not only quality products, but also efficient business processes that support differentiating levels of service to major customers.
More Connected: Near Real-Time Visibility into Orders and Inventory
Pearhead has been using TrueCommerce integrated EDI for NetSuite ERP to trade with some of the world’s largest retailers since 2017.
According to Lennie Diyco, Director of Warehousing and Logistics, Pearhead switched to TrueCommerce EDI mainly to improve its visibility into inventory and order management. The company chose TrueCommerce because it was “the best-fit integration with NetSuite based on our research,” Mr. Diyco offers. “Also one of our industry peers that uses a NetSuite/TrueCommerce EDI integration had nothing but good things to say about that combination.”
The deployment allowed Pearhead to effectively tackle persistent supply chain problems.
“Before moving to TrueCommerce we had no integration between EDI and NetSuite and relied on our 3PL for all our inventory and order management data,” recalls Mr. Diyco. “That made it difficult to track inventory, or even know how many orders we had open. Plus, if something happened at the 3PL, we’d completely lose access to all that critical data.”
Thanks to the seamless integration between TrueCommerce EDI and NetSuite, the company now has complete, near real-time visibility in NetSuite on open orders, inventory and payables. EDI transactions are accessible in NetSuite within seconds of being received, and outgoing EDI documents are generated automatically from NetSuite.
“Our turnaround on EDI orders is now within minutes,” asserts Mr. Diyco. “When we receive POs they export directly to NetSuite. Almost immediately we can run a report to see if we’re short stock on anything. A few minutes later we can release the order to the 3PL.”
That was a qualitative leap from the old procedure.
“Previously we were trying to handle all that with Excel spreadsheets—it was a disaster,” Mr. Diyco states. “Now everybody can just look into NetSuite for whatever information they need. We never even think about EDI.”
More Prepared for What’s Next: A “Best Fit” Integration
One strength of the TrueCommerce integration with NetSuite is support for a wide range of documents to streamline communication with customers, suppliers and 3PLs.
Pearhead currently exchanges EDI 810 Invoice, EDI 850 Purchase Order, EDI 855 PO Acknowledgement, EDI 856 Advance Ship Notice (ASN), EDI 860 PO Change Request and EDI 816 Organizational Relationships with its 13 trading partners. It also exchanges EDI 940 Warehouse Shipping Order, EDI 945 Warehouse Shipping Advice and EDI 997 Functional Acknowledgement transactions with its 3PL.
Accelerating ASNs, Shipping and Invoicing to Compress the Order-to-Cash Cycle
TrueCommerce integrated EDI has eliminated numerous manual processes, enabling Pearhead to slash turnaround time on orders, invoices and Advance Ship Notices (ASNs).
“One of the biggest benefits we get with TrueCommerce is the ability to automatically generate ASNs,” Mr. Diyco notes. “Those used to take 24 hours to process manually. Now we can send an ASN within 30 minutes of sending the order.”
Automation has similarly shortened Pearhead’s order processing time.
“Before it took us 24 hours to process an order, so orders we got on Monday weren’t received at the warehouse until Tuesday,” continues Mr. Diyco. “Now if we get an order at 6AM on Monday our 3PL has visibility on it by 6:30AM.”
The order-to-cash cycle has also been significantly compressed.
“As soon as an order ships and we generate the ASN, the invoice is approved in NetSuite and sent to the customer within minutes. This is a big benefit for us, because the faster our customers get their invoices the faster they pay them,” Mr. Diyco reports.
Comfortably Meeting Amazon Prime Shipping Demands
With EDI/ERP integration driving automated order fulfillment, Pearhead is now able to consistently fulfill Amazon orders within Amazon Prime shipping windows.
Mr. Diyco explains: “Prior to implementing TrueCommerce, every Monday morning when we’d get new Amazon POs through EDI, someone would have to manually check each one against inventory. Then we’d manually send a PO acknowledgement back to Amazon. This process would consume the entire day, so we couldn’t start processing orders until Tuesday and they usually wouldn’t ship until Friday.”
“Now when we get Amazon orders early Monday morning they’re being shipped to Amazon DCs by Tuesday or Wednesday—so we actually accelerated our Amazon shipping by 48 hours,” observes Mr. Diyco. “This enables us to be an Amazon Prime supplier.”
Improving Vendor Scorecards and Eliminating Chargebacks
The major improvements Pearhead has realized in shipping and document turnaround times has greatly improved its vendor scorecards and slashed chargeback costs.
“For big retailers like WalMart, Bed Bath & Beyond and Amazon, everything is a scorecard,” says Mr. Diyco. “Thanks to EDI integration, our scorecards have improved across the board, especially with ASNs. We’re also receiving significantly fewer chargebacks because we’re able to get data to our customers in near real-time.”
The numbers speak for themselves.
“For example, previously we had about a 46% on-time score with Amazon ASNs, and many of those late ASNs resulted in chargebacks,” Mr. Diyco points out. “Now our Amazon ASN score is 91%.”
More Supported: The Right Tools for the Job
The combination of NetSuite ERP and TrueCommerce EDI is working very well for Pearhead.
“NetSuite is a great tool for our purposes,” relates Mr. Diyco. “It has a lot of custom features that help with reporting and order management. We also find TrueCommerce EDI to be easy to work with alongside NetSuite.”
Responsive support is another welcome factor.
“TrueCommerce support has also been great, though frankly we rarely need to contact them,” Mr. Diyco adds. “Overall TrueCommerce EDI has been perfect for us and I’m happy to recommend TrueCommerce EDI to other NetSuite users.”
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