Synergy North America Inc. | Rich S Pirrotta

This need for real-time data will continue to drive demand for intuitive WMS, with built-in flexibility and the capability to store and interpret data in one place. The power of data delivered by SnapFulfil enables customers to keep up with demand while scaling for growth.

As a specific example of accuracy, one of Synergy’s retail customers asked if they were aware of their inventory accuracy for their multiple locations. At year-end, they had conducted their normal inventory assessment for financial purposes. “Given our ability to have accurate inventory in real-time, we thought we would be close to their actual level,” says Rich S Pirrotta, CEO, Synergy, a transformational leader with over 30 years of experience in line executive and management consultant roles. “They told us that the SnapFulfil platform had provided a value of $325 million in inventory, and their financial assessment showed only a $150 variance!”

A best-of-breed WMS like SnapFulfil allows retailers to track progress and reconfigure changes to achieve the best results and most efficient fulfillment operations. However, there is no point in being quicker and having speed of delivery if you are sending the wrong product to the wrong person. It’s also about delivering accuracy – and SnapFulfil is very precise and reliable.

Transforming Business

Technologically advanced WMS is one of the most cost-effective ways of connecting the ever-changing supply chain blocks. Synergy’s functionality-rich software integrates with other solutions, creating a seamless approach to peer-to-peer transactions in real-time. This lets firms share information about a transaction just once, but everyone up and down the chain can instantly see that data.

Importantly, by joining these silos into one cloud platform, Operations, Finance, HR, or Marketing Directors can also access a consistent, real-time summary or detailed view of their business, allowing them to make better, more efficient decisions based on solid data – essential as margins are now tighter than ever.

Through IoT-style technology, firms are also waking up to the value of the customer data trail and the loyalty they can harness through having a single customer view, which can only be achieved through integration and mapping each customer’s buying journey from start to end and beyond. And fulfillment is part and parcel of that. Therefore, having access to reliable, real-time data from a WMS is a critical link.

SnapFulfil offers seamless integration to ERPs and other systems through Jitterbit, a smart commercial software integration product, via a simple drag and drop capability. It’s quick and easy, no longer requiring the skills of a tech specialist – and the same is even true for direct integration with NetSuite. The existing connectors mean you can align systems via simple drag and drop workflows without expensive IT overhead and delays.

They also have a comprehensive API that many of our clients now use to integrate with SnapFulfil and interrogate data to then pass onto their own CRM or directly to clients’ e-commerce front ends. This self-configuration and availability of the data to the client is a leading edge and drives significant value.

As enterprise-level businesses have no choice but to open micro-distribution centers en masse, SnapFulfil can also successfully work with rigid and industrial-scale on-premise systems that lack the functionality and configurability of cloud-based WMS and can’t manage the smaller picks that e-commerce and D2C fulfillment demand.

Driving Value

According to Rich, the market is large, and several WMS solutions are available for companies’ evaluating solutions that drive value. With their focus on rapid value, Synergy aims to be the provider of choice for organizations in the D2C sector and the third-party logistics (3PL) companies that support retail and D2C.

Our solution, SnapFulfil, has taken its pioneering remote implementation (RI) initiative to the next level with an advanced version that enables customers to onboard the solution themselves.

A tailored ‘Self Implementation’ (SI) program provides step-by-step and hands-on guidance in project management and execution to provide clients old and new with greater control, more independence and internal system expertise.

The new documentation factors in key steps, decisions, and milestones to be completed throughout the project and covers everything from data gathering, configuring the technical infrastructure, user preparation and verification to data migration, stock take-on, and validation, plus go-live support.

This self-sustainable implementation option can facilitate quicker and slicker multi-site onboarding once Synergy has instructed customers in the first one or two. They now have all the technical essentials for a seamless self-rollout across their DC estate. One of Synergy’s retail customers recently launched twenty-five locations in 12 months using our self and remote implementation tools to support their rapid growth.

Los Angeles-based luxury and collectible online watch retailer Watch Gang is clocking up record deliveries since investing in SnapFulfil – handling thousands of closed tab shipments and subscription orders in days, rather than weeks, since its move to a 10,000 sq. ft warehouse.

Despite the challenges of onboarding during a pandemic, the flexibility, scalability, and ease of use of SnapFulfil have meant that fast-growing businesses such as Watch Gang have been able to pivot and meet demand with a superior customer fulfillment experience without delay.

Watch Gang’s SVP Operations, Sam Christian, said: “The SnapFulfil team’s attention to detail is first-rate and personalized. They’ve been doing remote augmentation all their working lives; it’s so slick and efficient. I can’t believe they’ll ever see the need to do on-site implementation again.

“When most things passed through the new WMS after Go Live, incremental volume went through the roof and without SnapFulfil I’d have manually been processing those orders weeks later. Quite frankly I would never have caught up.”

“Their WMS is everything we were hoping for; it manages and solves our specific issues and problems very well and tells us exactly what is where and the right quantities. For example, there’s been a perfect count on SKUs from day one and not a miss-shipment since.”

Towards the Future

Synergy is an organization with an outstanding WMS solution that is only beginning to deliver on the growth opportunities in the market. Supply chain technology has always been a critical part of an organization’s technology stack, but it has rarely been prioritized. Recent challenges for most companies in the supply chain emphasize the importance of strong technologies that can deliver rapid value.

They are domain experts in the WMS sector, and this is their exclusive focus. Their software and the team can assess and deliver rapidly on the value levers in a warehouse or fulfillment operations. It is not a cookie-cutter approach; every customer has a distinct set of challenges. It may be scaling and being able to add new locations quickly, becoming highly efficient with labor resources in a tight labor market, or demanding high picking and inventory accuracy to minimize returns and errors.

For the days to come, the company’s growth strategy is to focus on the sectors where the ability to harness the greater value in warehousing and fulfillment in a short period is now a business priority. “Our assessment of the market is that these sectors are D2C and 3PL companies. Our product roadmap reflects these priorities, especially with respect to accelerating time to value,” adds Rich.