Celigo turns the lights on for Lights4fun
COMPANY INFORMATION
THE CHALLENGES
The team at this global on-line retailer was working tirelessly across lots of disparate systems to service and reconcile the fulfilment of orders from its 14 different marketplaces.
The challenge was further compounded because their model relies on third-party logistics companies to handle their stock. They only use Amazon warehouses to fulfil their US orders, but Europe is supported by two additional warehouse providers in Germany and the UK.
Some of their main requirements lay in overcoming the complexities associated with working across so many third parties, each with their own systems, processes and needs.
Getting good quality management information in a timely manner required extensive manual effort and gaining a consistent view of its entire business and a single version of the truth required constant focus.
Overall, the end-to-end system architecture and business processes at Lights4fun served them well up to a point in their evolution, however, the organisation was not capable of scaling and the future aspirations of this high-growth business were not supported.
THE SOLUTION
Lights4Fun recognised that they needed an end-to-end platform to connect all marketplaces, and provide an accessible, single view of its prospect, customers, products, prices, orders and stock across all locations.
Any new solution also had to be robust and scalable enough to manage the demands of this high- growth business and its lofty aspirations.
Lights4Fun followed Catalyst’s standard engagement model, which starts with the Discovery and Analysis stage. Before making any vendor or partner commitments, this exercise allowed Lights4fun to be satisfied that NetSuite would meet all of its business requirements. Celigo would deliver against its integration needs and that Catalyst was the right partner to deliver the entire project.
There were two main parts to the project. The initial part was to ensure the correct setup and successful configuration of the NetSuite platform to support the core business processes. The second, equally critical part, was the complex integration required to satisfy the need to automate the data flows between NetSuite, the various marketplaces it operated in and its warehouses. For this part, Lights4fun decided to use Celigo.
THE BENEFITS
Catalyst completed the end-to-end NetSuite implementation and entire integration project in less than 100 days. Manual business processes and complex procedures have been driven out of the Lights4Fun business, which is a major win for the company. One of NetSuite’s core strengths is the raft of features and functions which can be applied to a business, out of the box. However, organisations such as Lights4Fun often have specific business process requirements or bespoke integration needs that require additional breadth and depth of sector knowledge and technical expertise to deliver a much more complex solution. With Return of Investment (ROI) often a further key consideration, Catalyst’s ability to deliver complex projects, such as this, in the same timeframe as a standard NetSuite implementation, is testament to the quality of its consulting team and focus on the goals of the project.
Now, new business processes are automated. Information is taken from multiple channels and automatically checked against payment records. Settlements are seamlessly matched for each Merchant Gateway, with only those that do not match requiring attention. The time-saving for Lights4Fun around this capability alone has been considerable.
Overall, the two-way automation across the business has completely transformed the way in which they operate. Lights4Fun has complete visibility of all orders from their sales channels and certainty of their stock position.