Expansion, market penetration and swelling profits.
Mutter any one of these in front of a business owner, large or small, and you’ll have them salivating. Yet talk of IT management, EDI integration, or API solutions and you can instead expect headaches and droopy eyelids.
Because, though we popularise stories of businesses who rise above the chaos and find success, we don’t talk enough about the growing pains that come with. So what do we find when we peer behind the profits?
Time and time again, we see scaling businesses struggling with supply management, expanding customer bases meaning increasingly stretched resources, and third-party integrations becoming an afterthought for time-poor business owners.
The truth is that consumers are changing their buying behaviours in response to supply chain issues. In order to meet customer demands and grow your business, you need technology that alleviates operational pains, not adds to them.
Knowing that makes it much harder to succumb to the headaches and tiredness, right? To talk about business growth, we simply must talk about EDI and API integration.
Because getting integration right, by working with specialists such as those at Crossfire, goes beyond third party compliance with benefits from automation such as cost savings, process efficiency, and data visibility: the ingredients your business needs to grow and evolve.
Hear it firsthand from thriving Kiwi business, OOB Organic.
When OOB Organic first approached Crossfire, their order management process was completely manual. Up until that point, Founder and CEO Robert Auton had been responsible for monitoring, accepting, and fulfilling orders - a workstream that had made sense when the business was still small.
Since then, though, OOB Organic has grown. With the exciting opportunity to sell in supermarkets came the additional challenge of managing a scaling company while staying focused on what Robert’s business does best: retail 100% certified organic food.
OOB Organic had the growing bush (their business), the fruit (their product), and an expansion plan (inventory management software and a 3PL partner), but were without the conditions necessary to ensure future growth.
In the same way they enlisted third-party logistic (3PL) partners to manage their growing warehousing and transport needs, OOB Organic acknowledged the need to engage dedicated specialists to oversee the end-to-end task of integrating their systems and automating their order fulfilment processes.
Enter EDI and API Integration specialists, Crossfire.
With Crossfire’s EDI and API integration, OOB Organic is able to sync their Unleashed Inventory Management System with two different 3PL warehouses, giving them the insights they need to prevent shortages or running out of stock. It also means they’re able to integrate directly with four different retail trading partners across both Australia and New Zealand, and comply with the EDI requirements of each retailer. This greatly reduces the risk of input errors and saves the company countless hours of manual processing.
What started as a need to meet EDI compliance requirements evolved into leveraging automation as a key driver of their ability to scale. Crossfire’s integration allows their retail customers, 3PL partners and Unleashed to speak directly with each other to automatically acknowledge orders, generate Advanced Shipping Notices (ASN), and send invoices.
But, according to OOB Organic Founder and CEO, the greatest advantage is no longer having to think about EDI or the channels of communications between these systems.
And with Crossfire Integration’s long-term approach to client relationships, OOB Organic is able to further fine tune the system to adapt to their growing needs. Twice now, Crossfire has been able to ensure seamless migrations when OOB Organic has needed to change 3PL providers. In addition, our fully-managed integration service means that the organic retailer can rely on ongoing specialist support as well as maintenance and monitoring.
OOB Organic now sits alongside many of the businesses whom we look to as success stories. With strong roots as a business who prioritises delivering delicious certified organic products, and fruit (literally!) that is sought after by consumers worldwide, the future growth of OOB Organic has been made possible through our unsung hero: EDI and API Integration.
With Crossfire, you can mitigate the growing pains in scaling your business and set yourself up for long-term growth.
Outsource complexity so you can focus on what you do best.
