Grosfillex North America Slashes EDI Costs Thanks to Orderful’s Outstanding Service
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Case Study
Business Challenge
Grosfillex North America delivers the high-quality resin furniture its customers need across the nation. But the company was taking up to six months to add customers to its EDI system, which delayed Grosfillex North America from filling orders and earning revenue in new relationships.
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Solution
To address these challenges, Grosfillex partnered with Doppio Group, a leading technology consulting firm, to implement Infor’s Cloud ERP and Orderful’s modern EDI platform. The combination of these solutions allows Grosfillex to onboard new customers faster, reduce infrastructure costs, and streamline their business operations.
Results
- Reduced customer onboarding time by 83 percent.
- Eliminated the need for a full-time EDI administrator.
- Reduced overall EDI costs by 28 percent.
- Eliminated trading partner customizations.
Consumers love resin furniture for its stylishness, affordability, and durability. Grosfillex North America offers a wide range of outdoor resin patio furniture, garden planters, and shelving storage solutions.
With over 30 years of experience manufacturing residential products in the United States and distributing throughout North America, Grosfillex North America has built its reputation based on the quality of its resin furniture and its outstanding customer service. That’s why Grosfillex must be able to form new relationships with suppliers and customers quickly and easily.
Until recently, Grosfillex North America lacked a way to onboard new customers effciently. A satisfied user of Infor M3 ERP software, Grosfillex North America used the M3 Enterprise Collaborator (MEC) to add new customers to its platform and worked directly with an Infor consultant to make changes to the system. The company also used Inovis BizManager to translate documents for EDI transmission. But the arrangement didn’t come with a service level agreement, so Grosfillex had no guarantees that its most urgent issues would be addressed promptly.
“Our consulting arrangement with Infor was costly, and it left us with the feeling that if a big issue came up and our consultant wasn’t available, we could see a significant disruption to our business,” recalled Dave Sarge, IT Systems Process Manager, Grosfillex North America. “We eventually ended up hiring a full-time EDI administrator just to configure our EDI transmissions, but it was hard to justify that salary for part-time work, so we had to put our administrator on day-to-day IT support tasks too.”
Orderful
Even with a talented EDI administrator on its team, Grosfillex took at least six months to onboard new customers. To make matters worse, the company could only onboard one customer at a time.
“Our sales department often requested us to add two or three customers at once, so there was a bottleneck,” said Jim Berger, IT Manager, Grosfillex North America. “And we were dealing with two different consultants to configure our Infor and Inovis software platforms. We reached a point where we needed a simpler, more reliable, more cost-effective way to handle EDI.”
Jim Berger, IT Manager, Grosfillex North America
Trusted Partner Streamlines Path to the Cloud
As Grosfillex North America began looking for an EDI vendor that could help it streamline onboarding, the company focused on affordable vendors that had a deep knowledge of Infor M3. Grosfillex initially considered SPS Commerce but was turned off by the vendor’s pricing and complexity. Orderful quickly stood out from the pack—for several reasons. Grosfillex North America appreciated Orderful’s user-friendly interface, which was a stark contrast to other systems the company had used. Orderful also had a reputation for helping its clients onboard new customers more quickly. Orderful’s rules-based engine promised to make it easy to build and maintain EDI connections. And Orderful had a track record of working closely with the Infor M3 integration experts at Doppio Group.
“I had already worked with Doppio consultants on previous IT projects and had a good experience, so when I discovered that Orderful had a relationship with Doppio, that sealed the deal,” explained Dave Sarge, IT System Process Manager. “It was a relief to find a partner who already knew what we were working with. The combination of Orderful and Doppio gave us a cost-effective one-stop-shop for all our EDI needs.”
Orderful
With Doppio’s expert assistance, Grosfillex North America went live on Orderful through a phased implementation approach as part of a larger project that included transitioning from an on-premises Infor ERP platform to a cloud-based version. Thanks to Orderful, Doppio’s team found EDI to be the easiest workstream to move to the cloud.
“We had so many workstreams to transition in this project, but Orderful was the one we didn’t have to worry about,” recalled Denise Hoffman-Fuchs, PMO Director, Doppio. “We also took comfort in knowing that Grosfillex wouldn’t have to have an EDI department to manage their mappings because from now on, they could simply configure rules in Orderful.”
Denise Hoffman-Fuchs, PMO Director, Doppio Group
Outstanding Customer Service Takes the Pain out of EDI
Today, Doppio serves as a managed services department in supporting Grosfillex’s Infor and Orderful implementations. Doppio configures new trading partners, relying on Orderful’s automated mapping and validation to streamline the task.
When Doppio onboards a new customer, the Orderful team digitizes the new customer’s EDI requirements within two days, which allows testing and validation to happen right away. The company has been impressed with Orderful’s level of customer service.
“Orderful sets up new EDI guidelines for us within two days after we request it,” Hoffman-Fuchs reported. “They also answer emails and calls by the next day—compared to other vendors that take three or four days. Orderful is easily the most responsive EDI vendor I’ve worked with. They’ve cut our project timelines in half for onboarding.”
Orderful
The Orderful interface serves as a dashboard that lets Grosfillex’s team monitor EDI transactions and identify any adjustments that need to be made. Sarge can easily handle mapping changes and some new customer setups. Depending on the nature of the work, he deals with Doppio or directly with Orderful.
“With Orderful and Doppio, we’ve eliminated one of the most time- and resource-intensive parts of our business so that we can focus on our bottom line. The service we’ve gotten from these two partners is what’s driving our own increased focus on serving customers. Moving EDI to the cloud has been a major win for us,” said Berger.
Orderful
Customer Onboarding Times Drop by 83 Percent
Since going live on Orderful, Grosfillex North America has reduced its overall EDI costs by at least 28 percent. The company no longer must designate a full-time staff member to handle EDI configurations. Grosfillex also appreciates being able to pay a set amount for each trading partner it sets up in Orderful.
“In the past, we’ve had to pay separate charges for each type of EDI document we exchange with a customer,” explained Berger. “Orderful’s flat fee policy saves us money and helps us set an accurate budget.”
Orderful
Orderful has also helped Grosfillex North America drive an 83 percent reduction in customer onboarding time. Grosfillex decreased onboarding time from six months to one month and is confident it can achieve further reductions.
“The Orderful portion of onboarding only takes two days,” said Berger. “Waiting for the customer to go through the testing process often takes a few more weeks, but Doppio helps us make tweaks to the mapping quickly based on the results of the testing.”
Orderful
With its new Orderful modern EDI solution, Grosfillex now handles thousands of EDI transactions per month—seamlessly.
“With Orderful and Doppio, we’ve eliminated one of the most time- and resource-intensive parts of our business so that we can focus on our bottom line. The service we’ve gotten from these two partners is what’s driving our own increased focus on serving customers. Moving EDI to the cloud has been a major win for us”
Berger
Orderful
Orderful is the Modern EDI Platform that gives logistics providers, retailers, manufacturers, and technology companies full control to onboard, manage, and resolve all of their trading partner relationships and transactions in real-time. With its unique ability to digitize trading guidelines, Orderful customers build a single API integration against consolidated requirements for all partners. Orderful automatically transforms data to EDI without complex mapping and validates transactions against actual trading guidelines in real-time. Orderful proactively identifies errors before transactions are sent and provides business analysts with a point and click business rules engine to correct errors instantly to keep your supply chain operating smoothly. Orderful is EDI Done Right!
Grosfillex
Grosfillex is a global manufacturer of resin products for the home environment with corporate headquarters in Oyonnax, France. Grosfillex has three large production centers in France, United States and Russia, as well as subsidiaries in Germany, Belgium, Brazil, China, Spain, France, Great-Britain, Holland, Italy, USA and Switzerland.
Grosfillex North America maintains 2 divisions which service the United States, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean – the Consumer Products Division and the Contract Furnishings Division. The Consumer Products Division manufactures and sells quality decorative garden planters, outdoor patio furniture and shelving storage products for consumer use. The Contract Furnishings Division produces commercial grade outdoor furniture products for use in hotels, resorts, restaurants and commercial properties.
While 50% of Grosfillex production is sold overseas, the company has always stayed loyal to the values and traditions of the craft industry, with sights always set on innovation and a commitment to consumer satisfaction. Over the last 56 years, Grosfillex has evolved into a global enterprise and owes its success to an ever-present commitment to quality, innovation and superior design. The Grosfillex brand is recognized world-wide as a guarantee of quality products.
Doppio
Founded in 2013, Doppio’s global consulting practice is focused on supply chain integration and data automation. Specifically, we surface data and integrate manufacturing, sales, distribution and IT functions using Infor technology across a range of industries. Our team of experts have a passion for solving complex problems and are spread in Chicago, Vancouver, Bangalore as well as across North America and India. Our clients turn to us because of our deep expertise with Infor M3 ERP and because we take accountability for the work that we do. Simply put, we approach our work with our clients in a “we are in this together” manner.
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