Trendset, Inc. - Case Studies - Unique Challenges

CLIENT
Major sports and fitness specialty retailer

CLIENT BUSINESS FOCUS
Retailers for all athletes and outdoor enthusiasts

CLIENT CHALLENGE FOR TRENDSET
This retailer has many retail store locations across the east coast and Midwest and hundreds of vendors who regularly ship goods to those locations.

The retailer needed a stronger system in which to manage the inbound freight coming to their locations from multiple vendors. At times, the retailer’s management felt like the vendors were controlling when, where and how much freight was shipped to the retailer’s stores.

TRENDSET SOLUTION
We developed the Vendor Supply Chain Guide to serve as an online, automated version of the entire human process of ordering and buying goods and having them shipped to the retailer’s locations .

A custom Web site and application introduced the concept of the retailer managing the entire process of in-bound freight.

The process begins with the vendors logging in to the retailer’s secure vendor Web site. They can come to the site to perform several key tasks in the vendor relationship:
- Register their company profile as one of the retailer’s vendors
- Request shipment on the Purchase Orders they would like to ship
- Upon permission to ship those Purchase Orders, the vendor is told when and where to send the shipment
- Select a carrier by plugging in some basic elements like where the shipment is originating, the destination, and how much it weighs.
- Get advice on how to package shipments to send to the retailer
- Get details on what to include on the bill of lading and what specific data items the retailer requires on all shipments from each vendor

We developed a custom, enterprise-wide, highly integrated vendor management system for the retailer. We did the development work and give them the ability to populate it with their own parameters, deploy it and manage the entire process.