Tri-Star’s integration story: Building a competitive edge with Crossfire

Quick summary

Tri-Star was one of Crossfire's first customers, with the initial relationship starting in 2010 and focusing on creating an EDI interface with an overseas partner. Tri-Star engaged Crossfire at a point when their business was expanding and they wanted to focus their energy on their core business elements rather than the complex data integrations that required a level of technical expertise they didn’t have in-house. 

Over the course of the partnership, the Crossfire team have gained intimate knowledge of Tri-Star’s business processes; meaning Tri-Star can call on Crossfire to implement any changes and add new integrations without huge time or cost implications.  

This intimate knowledge of Tri-Star’s business processes has made it easier for Tri-Star to remain adaptable in their system configuration, removing the need to remain tied to systems that were no longer meeting their needs. 

Henry Payne, Head of Crossfire, shares his thoughts “Tri-Star recently made the decision to change one of their key systems. Because of the way that the integration is built, we were able to make this a very seamless process for them, with only minor changes and minimal cost. Throughout this migration, all of the integrations with their existing customers continued to operate as before, despite the replacement of a core operational system."

Automating and simplifying 3PL operations

The bulk of the partnership between Tri-Star and Crossfire has focused on 3PL EDI. Because Tri-Star also stores the goods they send and receive, they field hundreds of requests to dispatch their customer's goods to different locations across New Zealand. Without an effective data integration programme, this would involve a lot of manual keying, address validation and be prone to errors.  

Tri-Star’s warehousing operations have been able to cater for many unique customer requirements through the combination of customised integrations and the flexibility within their WMS (Multipick - developed by Interlogic). For Multipick to function optimally, they need an integration partner that can make it easier for them to handle all of the incoming/outgoing formats and connectivity methods. Tri-Star customers use a range of formats including X12, EDIFACT, XML, and CSV.  They connect over AS2, SFTP, and web services. Crossfire natively supports these formats and connections and provides a standardised interface with Interlogic’s Multipick system. 

One of the benefits that Tri-Star have from working with Crossfire in regards to the different customers they service is that when the data is presented to the WMS, the operational team from Tri-Star have the data in the correct format, in the correct breaks. There are times when data needs to be consolidated. There's also times when it needs to be split out and translated.

For example, one Tri-Star customer supplies ‘Drumkits’, where the order for a Drumkit is made up of many smaller parts that are all picked from within the warehouse to make the complete kit. Custom logic in the integration ensures the correct pieces are consolidated under one order and provided to Multipick WMS in the format it requires. The Tri-Star team benefit from no longer having to manually review every single transaction before it gets sent down, saving time for higher-value tasks.

Crossfire ensures that data and documentation from source system(s) flows directly into Multiplick, enabling Tri-Star to operate without having to manually key in spreadsheets, phone calls and emails.  

Staying competitive in the International Freight Forwarding

Beyond the main 3PL integration components, Crossfire also provides integration for their freight forwarding and customs brokering customers. These integrations give their customers transparency around container delivery status / location and provides them with a planning capability they wouldn't otherwise have on the receiving end. 

"Because Crossfire’s integration specialists have broad experience with a number of systems, we've been able to integrate with a number of systems without any challenges, and we've been able to meet the needs of their freight forwarding division as well.” says Henry.

Crossfire’s existing experience working with Cargowise has made the integration with the freight-forwarding aspects of their business straightforward and stress-free. 

Conclusion

Crossfire is the engine behind the complex integrations that Tri-Star relies on to do business, and it integrates seamlessly with their customers, partners and Interlogic’s Multipick solution. As a fully-managed service, it's the combination of the team and Crossfire platform that have enabled Tri-Star to shed the typical anxieties that logistics operators have when dealing with data complexity and instead focus on growing and building their business.