Modernizing and Streamlining the Sales and Distribution Platform of a Leading US Furniture Manufacturer

Zionclouds > Modernizing and Streamlining the Sales and Distribution Platform of a Leading US Furniture Manufacturer

The company under discussion stands as one of the paramount furniture manufacturers and retailers in the North America, with an impressive network of over 2300 outlets spread across 1590 cities. Their dedication to their customers and the provision of cutting-edge tools and technologies to their sales and service teams have been vital to their success. However, with newer acquisitions, the company has faced challenges in integrating multiple systems such as sales and distribution, order management, and user authentication. This resulted in a significant technical debt.

Challenge

  1. Multiple, disjointed platforms which were labor-intensive to maintain.
  2. Accumulated technical debt and a lack of unified systems for supply chain and customer relationship management.
  3. Disparate pricing engines inherited from acquisitions.
  4. Diverse sales order management systems from various business units, leading to lost orders and a yearly loss of up to $15M.

Zion Clouds’ Approach

  1.  Addressing Technical Debt and Ensuring Operational Excellence:

    Zion Clouds, leveraging its proprietary application management platform AppX, made a thorough assessment of the existing state of the environment. With a focused, automation-driven approach, Zion Clouds upgraded all vital components of the Sales Order Management and CRM Platform, primarily built on core Oracle products. This resulted in:

    • A 50% reduction in Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) software and infrastructure issues.
    • A 39% increase in Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) incidents.
    • Yearly savings of $4M due to decreased system downtimes.

  3. Business Rules Management Engine Modernization:

    ZCS introduced a Business Rules Management (BRM) engine to centralize all orders. Using RedHat DROOLS and HazelCast caching, ZCS ensured efficient pricing and product configuration, thereby consolidating four different pricing engines into one, enhancing operational efficiency across all sales channels.

  4. Streamlining Sales Order Management:

    The diversity in order origination presented a challenge. ZCS devised an API-driven, Service Oriented Architecture leveraging Oracle SOA to uniformly process all incoming orders. Custom APIs and Java code facilitated the transformation of all order formats into a universal format, the Enterprise Business Object (EBO). This measure:

    • Eliminated order losses.
    • Enhanced security measures.
    • Facilitated integration of new sales endpoints.
    • Resulted in yearly savings of $15M for the company.

Technologies Used:  Java, Oracle SOA, Web Center Portal, Universal Content Mgmt, Service Bus, Weblogic, Hazel Cast, Oracle Identity and Access Management, Okta, SSO, PKI, Amazon Web Services (AWS), VM ware and Linux

Conclusion

Modernization and simplification of the technological infrastructure are paramount for organizations growing through acquisitions. Zion Clouds' approach in assisting this leading furniture manufacturer showcases the potential benefits of such an endeavor. Through streamlined operations, robust security measures, and efficient order management systems, the company is now better poised to cater to its vast customer base without the hurdles of technical inefficiencies.