Testimonial \ Sulyn Industries

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The Company:
Sulyn Industries www.sulyn.com is a manufacturing/importing company located in Coral Springs, FL. It is the major supplier of craft supplies including glitter, sequins and spangles, ornament kits and many other products. Sulyn Industries sells to many major retail outlets including Wal-Mart in both the U.S. and soon Canada, Michael's and Crafts and Stuff.

The Problems:
Sulyn Industries has a complex shipping operation because of their products - crafts supplies that are usually in small packages. Many small packages are shipped within larger boxes and sometimes those boxes are consolidated into one shipment.

When Wal-Mart announced its "Direct Store Delivery Consolidation" (DSDC) program Sulyn Industries' shipping concerns were exponentially complicated. With Wal-Mart's "DSDC" program, suppliers were now required to fulfill orders picked and packed for specific stores. Store-specific fulfillment substantially increased labor costs, fulfillment errors and chargebacks - a costly proposition for Sulyn Industries.

Wal-Mart also required Sulyn Industries to begin implementing the DSDC program with them through EDI and Wal-Mart (Sulyn Industries required this major transition to occur within 3 months! WalMart wanted detailed shipping information and individual invoices. This was complicated because Sulyn Industries was still shipping to Wal-Mart distribution centers but now each shipment had to be individually picked and pre-packed for each Wal-Mart store for easier routing for Wal-Mart. If Sulyn Industries made any mistakes in packing, labeling or invoicing Wal-Mart would audit Sulyn Industries and issue fines of ~$25 per mistake.

To facilitate invoicing and shipping additional automation and control techniques were needed - within 3 months.

Later in 2006, Sulyn Industries needed to interface to their new ERP system from Sage. 123 EDI was ready with an existing and proven interface for SagePro ERP. Sulyn Industries was functional in a few weeks.

Overall, the Wal-Mart DSDC program required Sulyn Industries to take major steps to comply with Wal-Mart's EDI requirements. And to do it quickly.

Regarding these concerns, Sulyn Industries' very active owner Linda Dickens relates, "123 EDI has been so readily available and so responsive to any and every challenge we have presented to them. We are now expanding into Canada. They give us confidence that we can take on new projects and they will make us credible, compliant and efficient with all of our trading partners. They have been the consummate professionals".

The Solution:
Sulyn Industries acquired a sophisticated warehouse management system (WMS) which required an EDI interface, quickly. Using its proven methodology, 123 EDI built that interface. Because of this interface work to Sulyn Industries' WMS 123 EDI was prepared to react to Sulyn Industries' Wal-Mart requirements. Within 2 months Manhattan Associates and 123 EDI collaborated to build the necessary interfaces and successfully tested the DSDC program with Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart (and other Wal-Mart suppliers) were so impressed by the accuracy and speed they contacted 123 EDI to discuss their solution.

Because EDI was strategically integrated into the ERP and WMS systems 123 EDI easily added new functionally that accommodated specific Sulyn Industries business processes. Sulyn Industries generated invoices from EDI as well as specific GS1-128 compliant labels and Packing Lists for Michaels and Jo-Anns. The EDI platform complements the existing ERP and WMS with trading partner compliance details.

"Their EDI methodology produces normalized data from all of our EDI transactions. This data has allowed us to go beyond basic EDI", states Dickens. "We have been able to automate numerous shipping processes, be accountable to our clients and vendors and we can create any report, all because of how they handle data for us."

The Results:
Now, even with the smaller version of 123 EDI Engine, Sulyn Industries flawlessly handles their huge volume of transactions generated by the DSDC requirement for Wal-Mart. Those transactions are processed in seconds.

"The 123 EDI solutions allowed Sulyn Industries to process orders quickly, cost-effectively and accurately," Dickens says. "When I look back at the daunting task of getting into EDI with a major retailer like WalMart, I now realize how fortunate we were to have 123 EDI as a partner. And how cost effective. Our Total Cost of Ownership for our EDI efforts has been substantially less than the learning curve and the staff that would have been required. Eliminating costly errors and immediate credibility alone cost justified this partnership."