The Challenge: Growth Outpacing the Back Office
Winning shelf space with major retailers is often the easy part. Keeping up with the operational demands that come with it is another story — and that's exactly where this supplier found itself.
Every purchase order arrived in a different format — EDI documents from big-box retailers, spreadsheets from distributors, emails from smaller accounts. Each one had to be manually keyed into the company's accounting system, cross-checked against inventory, and routed to the warehouse for fulfillment.
The result was a back office stretched thin:
- Order entry ate hours every day. Staff spent a significant portion of each shift manually re-entering the same order data across systems.
- Errors were routine, not rare. Mistyped SKUs, quantities, and shipping details led to fulfillment mistakes — and retailer chargebacks.
- Compliance was a constant scramble. Each retailer enforces its own EDI specifications, labeling requirements, and shipping documentation (ASNs, BOLs, SSCC labels). Missing a requirement meant fines or rejected shipments.
- Visibility was fragmented. No single view existed for order status, inventory levels, or shipment tracking, leaving leadership to make decisions on outdated information.
- Growth meant more of the same pain. Every new retail partner or sales channel added another manual process rather than a scalable one.
The company needed a way to bring every order — regardless of source — into one automated workflow, without ripping out the ERP and warehouse systems it already relied on.
The Solution: One Platform, Every Order, Fully Automated
The supplier partnered with SBSA Technology to automate order processing from intake through invoicing, using SBSA's cloud-based EDI and API platform.
1. Unified order intake across every channel SBSA consolidated orders from retailers, marketplaces, distributors, and e-commerce platforms into a single processing window, regardless of whether they arrived via EDI or API.
2. Automated retailer compliance SBSA's platform is pre-configured to meet the EDI specifications of major retailers, generating compliant purchase order acknowledgments, invoices, ASNs, BOLs, and SSCC labels automatically, with no manual formatting required.
3. Native ERP synchronization Rather than replacing the company's existing accounting system, SBSA synchronized order and inventory data directly with it in real time, keeping records accurate without duplicate data entry.
4. Bulk shipping and logistics automation Shipping labels and carrier documentation were generated in bulk with a single click, with automated routing across UPS, FedEx, DHL, USPS, and freight carriers for larger shipments.
5. Centralized operational visibility A single dashboard gave the team real-time insight into order status, inventory, shipments, and retailer compliance, replacing the spreadsheets and email threads they'd relied on before.
The Results
Within a few months of implementation, the business saw measurable change across its operations:
- Faster order processing. Orders that once took hours of manual entry were processed in a fraction of the time.
- Fewer errors and chargebacks. Automated compliance checks caught issues before shipments went out, reducing costly retailer penalties.
- Hours reclaimed every week. Staff previously tied up in repetitive data entry were freed to focus on account growth and customer relationships.
- Smoother onboarding of new retail partners. Adding a new channel no longer meant adding a new manual process.
- Clearer operational visibility. Leadership gained a real-time view into orders, inventory, and shipments instead of relying on scattered spreadsheets.
Beyond the numbers, the shift changed how the team worked day to day. Order processing that once required constant manual attention now runs largely on its own, turning what used to be a growth bottleneck into a scalable, automated process.
Looking Ahead
With manual order processing out of the picture, the company has been able to pursue new retail partnerships without adding proportional headcount to its back office, freeing the team to focus on strategy and growth rather than data entry.
Ready to move from manual order processing to complete automation?
Talk to SBSA Technology today for a free consultation.
https://www.sbsatech.com/
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