Ultimately, every business must deliver product on time at the lowest possible cost and remain profitable. To do that, however, you need to manage a lot of moving parts from manufacturing, to warehousing, to order processing and shipping – not to mention all of the exceptions that occur and possible, subsequent charge backs. Plus, you get to pay for all of the EDI documents needed. At an average of $4.00 per order that’s incredibly expensive all by itself.
All of these things combined really hurt your business’ profitability.
The first big part of successfully solving this puzzle focuses on a dramatic reduction in order processing time, order processing cost and order errors. The second big part is eliminating, or at the very least substantially reducing, the cost of EDI in working with your trading partners. But how do you do that?
Many e-commerce businesses tackle this challenge by chaining multiple software systems together, like an E-Commerce Site, an ERP System, a 3rd Party Shipping System, and an EDI Translation / Transmission solution. The only issue is that this still requires some degree of human intervention, the parts don’t always work well together and, consequently, they don’t provide the significant cost and error reduction that’s needed for optimum profitability.
On the other hand, OPAL is an intelligent, self-driving drop ship and large order fulfillment software solution that plugs into these existing software investments and truly automates the entire order process, working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
IN LESS THAN 8 SECONDS, OPAL automates receiving orders from retailers and e-tailers, manages all EDI transactions, processes and invoices orders through a supplier’s ERP and accounting system, and creates packing slips and custom branded 3rd party shipping labels per any retailer’s or e-tailer’s requirements. Once shipped, it sends back tracking information and invoices to the retailer or e-tailer, as well as tracking packages and sending inventory updates.
Additionally, OPAL takes advantage of the direct EDI links provided by retailers and e-tailers enabling a supplier to process a drop ship order with $0 cost for EDI documents – or an LTL, Full Truck Load or Container order for that matter. OPAL downloads POs (Document 850) from retailers and e-tailers, sends back Acknowledgements (Document 997), ASNs (Document 856), Invoices (Document 810) and Product Inventory (Document 846) with no EDI charges and is 100% compliant with each retailer.
So, if you employed OPAL, eliminating the cost for things like EDI document charges, EDI management and troubleshooting labor, order processing labor, reduced order exceptions to less than 5% of your order volume, and accomplished it with a total cost of CENTS rather than DOLLARS, wouldn’t that increase your business’ profitability?