Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Middleware, SDKs & Libraries
Applicable Industries
- Transportation
Applicable Functions
- Procurement
- Sales & Marketing
Use Cases
- Inventory Management
- Supply Chain Visibility
Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
Lights4Fun is a family-owned and operated business based in the UK, selling over 700 types of decorative lights for home and garden. As a true omnichannel business, they run a global enterprise selling across key markets across Europe and North America. They operate across 14 online marketplaces, including a UK and French website, Amazon channels across the US, UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, and three eBay sites. The company uses different fulfillment and third-party logistics companies to handle inventory in warehouses in the US, UK, and Germany.
The Challenge
Lights4Fun, a family-owned business selling decorative lights, was grappling with the challenge of operating across disparate systems to service and reconcile order fulfillment from its 14 online marketplaces. The company was using different fulfillment and third-party logistics companies to handle inventory in warehouses in the US, UK, and Germany. The existing setup was causing frustration as teams lacked visibility of each other's activities. The sales department was selling out-of-stock items without knowing when they would be replenished, requiring the maintenance of seven different spreadsheets. The company was also unsure if their 3PLs were communicating with their different websites and marketplaces. As the company was growing, they were missing key opportunities due to the time and resources spent on manual processes. To support their aspirations of becoming a scalable and high-growth business, they needed to find a better alternative to the expensive and time-consuming manual effort.
The Solution
Lights4Fun collaborated with Catalyst IT to set up an end-to-end platform that would connect all marketplaces and provide a unified view of its prospects, customers, products, prices, orders, and stock across all locations. NetSuite was selected as the ERP system to support core business processes, while Celigo handled their complex integration needs. This included the automation of data flows between NetSuite, the various marketplaces, physical warehouses, and third-party warehousing providers. Catalyst IT chose several prebuilt integration apps to handle the storefront and marketplaces, and integrator.io to handle the bespoke integrations. With Celigo, Lights4Fun finally had the critical element that would help them to scale operations: complete, real-time visibility of stock levels across its business, of processes like orders to ship, orders to transfer, inventory adjustments to make, stock validation and purchase orders to receive in a single dashboard.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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