Sportsman’s Supply Inc.

Objective

Replace a costly, problematic EDI system with a more cost effective and agile solution that supports both vendor and customer relationships

Solution

Leverage TrueCommerce’s EDI and Supplier Enablement solutions to quickly onboard trading partners, while automating key document processing for better wholesaler performance

Benefits

• Rapid implementation completed in 60 days
• 30 vendors set up with a turnaround time of 10 days each
• New customers onboarded and trading in 5 days on average
• Built-for-NetSuite solution offers seamless document exchange
• Powerful automation easily handles catalog management for ~120,000 SKUs
• Management by exception design saves significant time
• Custom ASN solution built in just 2 weeks
• Cost-effective platform pays for itself in under a year

Background

Sportsman’s Supply Inc. has been outfitting athletes, sports teams, and outdoor enthusiasts with high-quality equipment since 1968. A prominent wholesaler, Sportsman’s Supply operates out of a 100,000+ square foot facility in Fenton, Missouri, and carries more than 500+ top brands, including Coleman, Timberline, and Rawlings.

According to W. Mofield, Operational EDI and Analytics Support at Sportsman’s Supply, the company specializes in connecting manufacturers with major retail and eCommerce channels. He commented, “The odds are good that if you’ve purchased a piece of sporting equipment from any major online presence in the last 10 years, some of that merchandise passed through our warehouse.”

Electronic Data Interchange isn’t new to Sportsman’s Supply; they’ve been using EDI to exchange documents with major suppliers and customers for more than a decade. As Mr. Mofield explained, “Our larger vendors, like Rawlings and Coleman, have said, ‘If you’re going to do business with us you have to do it with EDI.’ We have too much transactional flow for any process that isn’t automated.”

Prior to starting with TrueCommerce, Sportsman’s Supply was utilizing SPS Commerce’s EDI solution to manage their transactions. However, the provider’s cost, coupled with service issues, prompted Mr. Mofield and his team to look at a new solution. He recalled, “SPS is a practical system, but pricey. They’re also a bit monolithic; effecting changes takes a long time.”

The company considered designing a custom solution from the ground up, but realized the TrueCommerce solution offered greater, more rapid ROI. “The cost benefit of inhouse development wasn’t there because TrueCommerce was so cost effective,” noted Mr. Mofield.

TrueCommerce was a “natural fit” according to Mr. Mofield, because one of Sportsman’s Supply’s sister companies also leverages our integrated EDI solution. Mr. Mofield noted, “They had such an excellent experience with TrueCommerce, they naturally recommended the TrueCommerce solution, and it was exactly what we were looking for.”

A FAST, SEAMLESS TRANSITION TO A FULLY INTEGRATED SOLUTION

TrueCommerce’s time-tested onboarding strategy made it easy for Sportsman’s Supply to switchover from their previous EDI solution. Mr. Mofield was especially impressed by how quickly the implementation process was completed. He recalled, “With TrueCommerce, we went from a signed agreement to a live EDI solution in less than 60 days.”

The combination of speed and topquality service continued as Sportsman’s Supply began onboarding suppliers to the TrueCommerce OneTime supplier enablement platform. Mr. Mofield remarked, “Setup, testing, and complete turnaround hasn’t taken more than 10 days for any of the 30 vendors we’ve handled. We haven’t had any issues or complaints.”

Some of Sportsman’s Supply’s vendors do not use EDI, while others continue to use other provider platforms. For Sportsman’s Supply, TrueComerce’s ability to work with other software solutions has been highly beneficial. According to Mr. Mofield, “Some of our vendors are still using SPS, and TrueCommerce had an existing plug-in for that option, so any vendors who didn’t wish to switch didn’t have to. That’s made it easier for them to trade with us.”

It was also essential that the new EDI solution seamlessly connected with Sportsman’s Supply’s NetSuite ERP. Once again, TrueCommerce was up to the task with a fully integrated solution that is Built for NetSuite Certified. “The integration bundle for NetSuite is very, very robust,” said Mr. Mofield, “I’ve been impressed by the ease with which it is able to manipulate, update, and create transactions.”

MAKING IT EASY TO DO BUSINESS IN EVERY DIRECTION

Sportsman’s Supply plays a crucial role as a wholesaler, bringing targeted brands together with top retailers. Mr. Mofield stated, “We have between 60 and 70 vendors that we use for main sourcing. Many of our vendors aren’t technologically savvy, so we fill that niche to make it easy for them to approach the eCommerce market.”

Accurate product data is essential for these digital trade relationships. “Our company has around 120,000 SKUs, so maintaining SKU catalog relationships can be challenging. With our old EDI solution, maintaining our catalogs was difficult because they were slow,” commented Mr. Mofield.

Now, TrueCommerce’s cutting-edge EDI solution and fully managed services model help Sportsman’s Supply stay competitive in the world of digital commerce. Mr. Mofield said, “We use TrueCommerce EDI with our biggest customers, like Amazon and Walmart. We have them integrated directly. It’s quite useful for both of those.”

He explained, “Walmart and Amazon tend to make changes to their EDI setups with relative frequency for things like catalog maintenance. With TrueCommerce, if we need to make a change, it’s as simple as jumping in and updating the data; the integrated solution handles the rest. Having that hands-on access was a very big selling point.”

POWERFUL AUTOMATION OFFERS “RELIABILITY AND CONSISTENCY”

As a smaller company working with some of the world’s largest global retailers, automation has played a key role in Sportsman’s Supply’s success. He commented, “Having a solution like TrueCommerce EDI that can produce reliable automation and make our job easier is a must. I can’t imagine going back to not having EDI after experiencing it.”

Mr. Mofield pointed out, “For us, the main goal is reliability and consistency. We care more about getting an accurate answer than speed, but automation produces speed as well. So, it’s a win-win for us.”

Speed has certainly come in handy for Sportsman’s Supply, which Mr. Mofield classified as a “high-volume company.” He specified, “We do probably tens of thousands of different transactions daily, and we’ve definitely saved time by using TrueCommerce EDI. The time we spend maintaining and troubleshooting EDI issues has gone down dramatically.”

Another important feature of the TrueCommerce platform is the ability to manage transactions by exception. “One of the things we had issues with when using SPS was that whenever a transaction failed, it could be difficult to track down the actual document itself, the raw EDI text, as well as the failure reason. Sometimes a transaction might fail, and we wouldn’t receive a notification,” said Mr. Mofield. This meant his team needed to spend precious time searching the system for the failed transaction, and then assess the data to find out what needed fixing.

By contrast, TrueCommerce’s EDI solution is built to automatically notify users of any transaction issues. This has saved Mr. Mofield and his team considerable time and effort. He noted, “If a transaction has a problem, the system sends you a notification, and it stays waiting for attention in the inbox or outbox. Plus, the system highlights the problem that needs attention, and I like that very much. It’s vastly superior to what we had before.”

TrueCommerce also makes it easy to tag, file, and find any transaction with any trading partner. “I like the ability to organize and schedule transactions in TrueCommerce Foundry,” noted Mr. Mofield. “It makes it much easier for us to bundle and batch orders, and it simplifies troubleshooting as well. I also appreciate that the TrueCommerce system maintains a database of every transaction, and that those transactions are easily quantifiable and searchable.”

CUSTOM SOLUTIONS FOR UNIQUE BUSINESS NEEDS

Advance ship notices (ASNs), also known as EDI 856 documents, are required by most major retailers, with detailed mandates on timing and line-item inclusion. But for Sportsman’s Supply, ASN creation came with additional challenges.

Mr. Mofield described, “We have a very unusual ASN setup due to the warehouse management system we’ve been using. The system was generating an ASN based on the contents of an XML file but the XML file that our WMS generates is not well formatted.” (For that reason, among others, the company is currently working on implementing a new WMS.)

To handle the “messy” XML data, Sportsman’s Supply needed a custom ASN solution, for which TrueCommerce’s highly skilled engineers stepped up to the plate. The results were a home run, according to Mr. Mofield.

“The TrueCommerce team built a custom ASN solution from the ground up in about two weeks. They were able to take a mess of data and turn it into a usable 856 document,” said Mr. Mofield. “The team that worked on the flat file intake for converting our XML files into advance ship notices has done a remarkable job. It’s blown me away.”

He was especially impressed because the same problem, when presented to Sportsman’s Supply’s old provider, was never truly fixed. He recalled, “We had a ticket open with SPS for 18 months because there were inconsistencies with the way they were handling our ASNs. Some of our container, pallet, and carton weights were not getting translated accurately. After 2 years of development, SPS still didn’t have a 100% bulletproof solution. TrueCommerce built one for us in two weeks.”

SUPPORT FROM A TEAM OF EXPERTS

Mr. Mofield’s experience with TrueCommerce’s support teams has been nothing short of fantastic. As he put it, “I have nothing but glowing praise for TrueCommerce’s support and integrations teams. All of the people at TrueCommerce are super talented; they are very, very good at their jobs.”

The speed of issue resolution has been a key benefit for Mr. Mofield. He commented, “I’ve never had a question that wasn’t almost immediately answered. The TrueCommerce team is super knowledgeable about their product. They know what it’s capable of; they know how it works. When you have a problem, if they don’t have an immediate solution, the turnaround time is usually same day or next day.” RAPID

ROI AND GROWTH ENABLEMENT

Between TrueCommerce’s cost-effective model and fine-tuned integrated solutions, Sportsman’s Supply has already seen significant ROI. Mr. Mofield clarified, “Again, the cost of this solution compared to our old solution—it’s barely a comparison. We projected our ROI, and the switchover will pay for itself in less than a year.”

In addition to internal efficiencies and cost savings, TrueCommerce is also helping Sportsman’s Supply to impress new customers and increase revenue.

“Probably the biggest benefit for us has been the speed with which we can onboard and integrate new customers,” said Mr. Mofield. “If it takes 6 weeks to get a customer relationship set up, that’s time where we aren’t impressing our customers or making it easy for them to do business with us—and that goes for vendors too. Plus, it’s six weeks before we can get a new product on the market as well.”

He went on, “With TrueCommerce, on average, we’re able to onboard customers in five days. We can go to a vendor, say we’d like to start doing business, and 5 days later we’re exchanging EDI documents. That gives us five extra weeks of sales or revenue compared to our old solution.”

TOOLS THAT HELP DURING TOUGH TIMES

Mr. Mofield reflected on the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on Sportsman’s Supply. “COVID has been difficult for us, especially because a lot of our customers are sports organizations, like high school and college football, baseball, and basketball teams. They’re just not playing right now, some seasons have been canceled.”

He illustrated, “It’s hard to sell a baseball bat when nobody’s using it to hit a ball.” Sportsman’s Supply supports the decision of these organizations, knowing that canceling seasons was a tough, but a smart and ethical choice for many schools and professional teams.

Luckily, Sportsman’s Supply’s other lines of business have fared better. As Mr. Mofield pointed out, “Our outdoors departments have picked up business because activities like hunting, fishing, and hiking are some of the few things people can now safely enjoy for recreation and leisure.”

TrueCommerce’s cloud-based, integrated EDI solution has helped Mr. Mofield and his team manage transactions throughout the pandemic. He remarked, “Almost our entire office is working from home. Without a doubt, having a cloud-based solution has helped us manage things. As long as I’ve got internet access and a web browser, I can do whatever I need to do with the TrueCommerce platform. That has been supremely helpful during COVID.”

That accessibility has also enabled Mr. Mofield’s team to work together, even when they’re apart. He reported, “It’s nice that the TrueCommerce system looks the same regardless of where you’re using it. Even if we’re working from home, we can look at things together and have 100% transparency into what we’re doing.”

ONE EYE TOWARD THE FUTURE

When COVID shutdowns began, Sportsman’s Supply was in the middle of significant warehouse expansion. Mr. Mofield remembered, “One of the reasons we purchased the TrueCommerce solution was that we were anticipating scaling up some of our organization’s operational capacity. TrueCommerce was the best fit for us because whether you’re doing 100 or 10,000 transactions a day with a customer, the impact on the Foundry platform is negligible. It scales extraordinarily well.”

While we know things may not get back to “normal” for a while, Mr. Mofield was hopeful about the future. He said, “I’m looking forward to onboarding tons of new customers, clients, and trading partners, and I don’t foresee any potential problems with the TrueCommerce solution dealing with those. I love the fact that for many vendors and customers who are wellestablished, the installation is mostly plug and play.”

To other wholesalers and distributors, Mr. Mofield said, “I would fervently recommend TrueCommerce. I have been nothing but impressed with the performance that we’ve gotten from the TrueCommerce system. I was pleased with it when we initially installed the solution, and the more experience I have with it, the more I like it.”

He finished with a note on TrueCommerce’s performance not just as a provider, but as a team player, saying “It’s been remarkably satisfying to work with professionals who understand their product, and our product, and can synergize solutions that work quickly and accurately.”

“It’s been remarkably satisfying to work with professionals who understand their product, and our product, and can synergize solutions that work quickly and accurately.”

W. Mofield
Operational EDI and Analytics Support
Sportsman’s Supply