Cathy’s Concepts
Know how Cathy’s Concepts automated business processes through BigCommerce – Distribution One integration.
About Cathy's Concepts
Cathy’s Concepts is a premier customizable gifts provider, founded in 1988 by Cathy LaValley. They sell customized gift items ranging from travel, home, wedding, and other related product lines. From selling jewelry offline to venturing into wholesale and retail, Cathy’s concepts have established itself as a pioneer in the gift provider industry.
Technology
BigCommerce, which is their eCommerce software, provides top-notch eCommerce standards coupled with customization needs for the industry. Distribution One covers all backend aspects such as order fulfillment and inventory management, with elevated efficiency, flexibility, and accuracy.
Challenges Faced
The foremost pain point faced by the business was the burden of manual data transfer between BigCommerce and Distribution One. Information related to new orders, product details, real-time inventory, and customer information were to be manually transferred from one application to another. Orders placed in BigCommerce had to be manually entered into Distribution One, and the latest information on inventory and product details from Distribution One had to be updated manually into BigCommerce. This resulted in error-prone data and also a lack of access to critical business data to teams when it mattered most. This proved to be a major roadblock that resulted in poor customer order fulfillment workflow and hence hampered sales funnel conversions.
Business Requirements
Cathy’s Concepts required the elimination of the burden of manual data entry related to orders, products, inventory, and other key business data from/to their ERP and eCommerce software. Subsequently, they wanted to integrate BigCommerce and Distribution One and, in the quest to find an appropriate platform to implement the integration, they came across DCKAP Integrator.
Solution
Our team of integration experts and solution providers understood the roadblocks they faced and came up with a set of integration pipes to be established between BigCommerce and Distribution One.
Order Processing
As soon as the order is placed and transferred to Distribution One, the ERP allocates the different verticals responsible for fulfilling it with the relevant information. As soon as the order is placed in a queue by Distribution One, up to date details of the order related to the invoice, tracking status, shipping info and delivery related details are all synchronized and updated into the BigCommerce system.
Data Flow: Distribution One to BigCommerce
Inventory Data
All details related to product inventory, such as a number of items available, sold out items that are added manually in Distribution One, were scheduled to be frequently updated into the BigCommerce store. All brick-and-mortar store (offline) orders made by customers that are available in the ERP were communicated to the BigCommerce front-end.
Data Flow: Distribution One to BigCommerce
Overview
Order Create
New Orders arising from BigCommerce are synchronized in real-time into the Distribution One platform.
Data Flow: BigCommerce to Distribution One
Product Details
The latest product information, such as SKU, width, height, weight, price, description and other relevant details such as the category they belong to, were scheduled to be updated on a daily basis into the BigCommerce store so that visitors see the most recent product data.
Data Flow: Distribution One to BigCommerce
BigCommerce + Distribution One: Post-Integration
Our DCKAP Integrator team, comprised of expert integration specialists, promptly set up all the above-stated solutions to Cathy’s Concepts on time and in perfect shape to Cathy’s Concepts team. The integration of their BigCommerce store and Distribution One ERP not only solved their hectic problems related to data and workflow management but also helped them boost sales and revenue by speeding up their business processes, thereby fulfilling orders and other customer requests at speeds and efficiency much higher than what they had pre-integration.
-- Jessi Smithson
