DROPSHIP SUPPLIER ARIZONA AMENITIES CUTS DELIVERY TIME BY 50 PERCENT WITH VENDORNET

VendorNet Payoff

• Reduced time from order receipt to shipment by 50 percent
• Eliminated redundant processes in shipping and invoicing
• Expanded peak selling periods
• Increased efficiencies in manufacturing operations
• Facilitated order processing from remote locations
• Delivered controlled environment for receiving orders

"I recently had to go out of town on business, and I was still effectively able to process orders. Because of the simplicity of accessing VendorNet Dropship Manager via the Internet, I was able to download all of our orders to a laptop and get them into production even from a remote location. It’s just an incredible productivity tool that every dropship supplier should encourage their retailers to adopt."

Scott Burton, Operations Manager
Arizona Amenities, Inc.

The Company

Arizona Amenities, Inc is a multi-faceted company offering its corporate clients southwest-oriented gifts for conventions and group meetings. Arizona Amenities is also a dropship supplier to online and catalog retailer RedEnvelope, Inc., manufacturing and delivering personalized branding irons directly to RedEnvelope’s barbecue enthusiasts.

The Business Challenge
Lack of Control and Cumbersome Processes

RedEnvelope is noted for its unique and elegantly packaged products, and it sets high standards for its suppliers. Dropship supplier, Arizona Amenities is no exception. Arizona Amenities needed to process, package, and ship orders in a timely fashion using processes and technology that complied with RedEnvelope’s standards of excellence. While these requirements hold true today, compliance in the past was more difficult for Arizona Amenities to achieve due to a lack of control over when it received orders, which placed additional performance pressures on the supplier during seasonal peaks. It was also encumbered by manually intensive, redundant, and inefficient operations required to process, ship, and invoice an order.

Scott Burton, Operations Manager at Arizona Amenities explains, “Unlike many dropship suppliers, we have to physically produce our product after we receive the order. It’s much better for us from a production standpoint to receive orders in smaller increments rather than all at once. Prior to VendorNet, we might do one download a day that had 150 or more separate orders in it. Processing that many orders at once for a customized gift increased the potential for problems in the manufacturing process, and created bottlenecks in shipping and accounting due to the duplicity of tasks required to produce the shipping labels and invoices.”

The VendorNet Solution
Control, Visibility, and Streamlined Processes

With RedEnvelope’s adoption of VendorNet Dropship Manager, Arizona Amenities was likewise faced with a shift to the retailer’s new technology – a shift that Burton expected to be difficult. VendorNet proved him wrong. “Based on my experience with our old technology, I thought we were in for a painful transition, but I was pleasantly surprised. VendorNet Dropship Manager worked from day one,” states Burton.

VendorNet Dropship Manager is integrated with RedEnvelope’s order management system. A powerful mapping utility extracts dropship order information and makes that information available to Arizona Amenities via a secure RedEnvelope VendorNet-enabled web site. Utilizing a user name and password, Arizona Amenities downloads orders throughout the day in manageable increments eliminating the potential for order processing and production bottlenecks. Further streamlining order processing, VendorNet Dropship Manager generates packing slips with FedEx bar-coded shipping labels eliminating the need for Arizona Amenities to create shipping labels from another system. VendorNet automatically ship confirms the orders at the end of each business day and transmits a manifest to Federal Express. FedEx pick-up information including tracking numbers is automatically sent to RedEnvelope’s order management system providing its customer service representatives with up-to-date status and visibility. Once orders are shipped, Arizona Amenities generates invoices for delivery back to RedEnvelope via the Internet.

Reaping The Benefits

VendorNet Dropship Manager has created an efficient operational environment for Arizona Amenities. Orders are downloaded throughout the day providing greater control over the manufacturing process and reducing the potential for human error. Critical tracking information is readily available to both Arizona Amenities and RedEnvelope creating a higher standard of customer care. Peak selling windows have been expanded due to a 50 percent reduction in time from order acceptance to shipping. Compliance with RedEnvelope’s packaging and shipping standards is also more easily achieved through customized packing slips and shipping labels that make Arizona Amenities transparent to the end customer.

Burton comments, “If I had to use one word to describe VendorNet Dropship Manager, it would be ‘simple’. It is a fantastic product that has transformed our ability to operate more efficiently, and it has created a tremendous savings in time in virtually every area.”

Arizona Amenities is also pleased with the service and support it has received from both RedEnvelope and VendorNet. According to Burton, technical assistance is always available either from VendorNet-trained RedEnvelope personnel, or in the few times it has been required, directly from VendorNet.

At the End of the Day

Burton wraps it up, “I recently had to go out of town on business, and I was still effectively able to process orders. Because of the simplicity of accessing VendorNet Dropship Manager via the Internet, I was able to download all of our orders to a laptop and get them into production even from a remote location. It’s just an incredible productivity tool that every dropship supplier should encourage their retailers to adopt.”