What made Big Poppa Smokers think to remodel their existing system – Major Business Challenges

No real-time tracking of product variant

In order to diversify their product offerings, BBQ offered product variations (custom options like Grizzly Coolers, Knives, Lump Charcoal, and Wood Pellets) on their basic products, which enabled their customers to buy more variety online.

Their existing system could not track inventory based on any variation, due to this, the team was clueless about the delivery of custom products throughout the fulfillment process.

Manual Order Management Workflow – Generating PO for Custom products

Big Poppa Smokers doesn’t store all the custom products they sell online, that’s why they are required to make a purchase order and send the detailed order information to the supplier. This PO should also contain the complete custom product info. Even the dropshipment process should follow this route.

Fulfillment inaccuracy

Due to the manual way of managing order information, human error was unavoidable. And, as a result, they were shipping wrong goods to the customers which were affecting their brand credibility.

No centralized system to manage inventory

They were lacking a central repository system from where they can keep a check on the inventory levels and manage the stock for timely fulfillment of the orders.

Considering how Orderhive Enterprise can be customized and scaled according to their requirements, Big Poppa Smokers decided to adopt our solution.

Solution

Central Repository for tracking inventory

Their existing system was used by multiple users, so the team was not able to trace the event which triggered the inventory update.

Orderhive Enterprise automated Big Poppa’s Inventory system, which results in

  • The system now provokes a notification when the quantity of stock has been updated and whenever a new order or PO is placed.
  • Captures the reason when a warehouse user changes quantity or price of a product from inventory listing page & inventory detail page.
  • Captures any change in quantity, price, and description made within the system.

Automate the PO Creation Process

For certain products, the team required generating a PO. They are also required to notify their supplier with a detailed description of the order with customer & custom option information.

Orderhive Enterprise automated their PO system, which results in

  • Automatic creation of purchase orders from the sale orders.
  • Notify the supplier through email as an when a purchase order is created with a detailed description of the customer & custom options.
  • Once the Supplier ships the products directly to the customer, the PO is marked as fully received in Orderhive.
  • For the next step, Orderhive Enterprise automatically creates shipment in Magento, invoice, payment in Orderhive and QuickBooks & also generates a receipt for the same in Orderhive.
  • Mark the order as paid & delivered in Orderhive and Magento. This way the complete process of order fulfillment is automated by Orderhive Enterprise.

Phase 2

Challenges

Tableau integration

Tableau offers immediate analytical insights by transforming data into interactive visualizations. This process takes only a few seconds as Tableau offers an easy to use drag-and-drop interface.

For swift business insights, Big Poppa required integrating Tableau Software to their Orderhive Enterprise account.

Physical inventory count feature to eliminate stock-taking discrepancy

Stock discrepancies happen while comparing physical count with the stock stored in the warehouse. It was important for the team to keep this issue in check, as stock on hand is equal to cash on hand and it can have a great impact on order fulfillment process & the ROI.

Now, to make sure that system reflects accurate stock level, it was important to maintain a comparative sheet that covered all the inventories held in the sequence with the physical location.

Advanced Inventory Search – Recording the inventory transaction history

They needed a customized feature, where the management can have an instant notification about any stock update with the correct operational details.

For e.g. when they receive any POs, the stock level gets automatically updated across the Orderhive and Magento, so the Orderhive Enterprise system should be able to capture the inventory transaction details and record them for future access.

Void Shipment update – an automated process to handle void shipments

Big Poppa needed an integrated platform which enables two-way sync between ShipStation and the centralized system, so any shipping updates/adjustment including void shipments details can be easily transferred.

Closure of PO Balances – Automating the Purchase closing process

Whenever a PO is raised by the team, they wanted a customized PO closing process, where they can close the PO before receiving the full consignment.

Solution

Two-way integration with Tableau

Tableau can access the database on Big Poppa’s dedicated server and generate real-time visual analytics quickly.

A comparative sheet/metrics to identify the actual stock on hand

Orderhive Enterprise designed a process, where a physical count comparative sheet/metrics (on monthly, quarterly and annual basis) is generated which displays the difference (Variance Quantity) between the actual physical stock located in a particular location against the stock counts maintained in Orderhive.

Big Poppa users can filter the stock metrics on the basis of category and warehouse, depending on the filtration parameters, Orderhive will fetch records and will display stock items in QTY units.

The stock items will be segregated by physical stock units and system stock units, Big Poppa can update and validate the physical stock units as and the system stock units from a single dashboard.

Tracking inventory operations detail to validate/verify stock updates

Orderhive Enterprise implemented a feature, where Big Poppa can access the “Transactional history of an Inventory operation”, with any inventory update the Orderhive system records/capture the inventory operations details and store the report in the system for further access.

Void Shipment auto-update

Orderhive Enterprise instantly retrieves the latest shipping details including the cancellation details from ShipStation and update the customer with the new tracking. no via an email.

Orderhive Enterprise, the new shipment detail is being sent as per the specified format described by the team. With this Big Poppa has a more streamlined process to handle void shipments without disrupting the fulfillment process.

Advanced Purchase Order management process

With an automated purchase order management system:

  • Big Poppa can close partially received orders, under received order and over received orders.
  • Send notification to the warehouse about the partial & full shipments of orders, which allows the warehouse staff to process the goods for outbound delivery & keep a check on the inbound delivery.