Resources Case Studies

Eastman Outdoors is the leader in high quality, outdoor leisure products. Geared for the outdoor enthusiast, they offer a complete line of outdoor products designed to enhance the outdoor experience including Carbon Express Arrows, Gorilla Gear, Gorilla Treestands, EXO Tech Safety Harness, Reveo, and the Beacon & Bridge Market.

Eastman markets it outdoors and consumer based products to various North American retailers, including Bass Pro, Big Rock Sports, Cabela’s, Bass Pro, MC Sports, United Hardware and Wal-Mart, as well as direct to the consumer.

Replacing a Costly & Problematic EDI Process
Until recently, Eastman used an Internal Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) software solution that interfaced to its customers’ systems and its internal Epicor solution. Unfortunately, the solution proved to be problematic and costly for Eastman for the following reasons:

• High failure rates with maps. EDI maps are constantly changing to meet a retailer’s integration requirements. Eastman’s software provider was not proactive in changing its maps, resulting in a time-consuming process with poor results.
• Increasing chargeback’s. Retailers were fining Eastman for their poor supply chain processes that resulted from inaccurate barcode labels for shipments or problems with the timing and data within Advance Ship Notices (ASNs).
• Costly customer support. Eastman’s EDI provider offered customer support for a large annual fee, while providing long wait times and inaccurate responses to Eastman’s inquiries.

Eliminating Integration Worries
After its past experience with EDI, Eastman was looking for a proven integration company that it could trust. Eastman found SPS Commerce to be larger than expected with a large and experienced staff, as well as a true desire to work with Eastman not just to secure their business but to earn it each and every month with superior performance. In addition, they had partnerships with most of Eastman’s retailers that enabled SPS to proactively change EDI maps to meet any new requirements well in advance.

“EDI is our lifeline to our customers and mistakes can be costly and damaging to our trading partner relationships and our bottom line,” stated David Tucker, Director of IT at Eastman. “We invoice most of our customers via EDI. If our system is down for a long period of time or errors occur, it could easily impact our financials. Our main criteria in selecting an outsourced EDI provider were reliability of the system and a responsive and knowledgeable staff. We found this, and more, at SPS Commerce.”

In evaluating SPS Commerce, Eastman discovered that many of their retail partners recommended SPS due to the accuracy and reliability of their services and SPS’ impressive list of customers of all sizes. Their monthly subscription fees included all mapping changes and customer support, all at a lower cost than their existing solution. The decision to use SPSCommerce.net was clear, and it signed with SPS Commerce in January 2009.

Confidence at a Lower Cost
Eastman’s peak shipping season was approaching and it needed to have SPSCommerce.net completely implemented before then. SPS Commerce’s implementation team worked rapidly to implement and integrate SPSCommerce.net with Eastman’s Epicor system and its trading partners

Today Eastman is using SPSCommerce.net with more than 50 connections to dozens of trading partners. Its service fees include mapping changes, full access to its support line and numerous online services at no additional fee.

“SPS has lived up to its reputation of excellence, both in its services and its customer support,” commented Tucker. “Whenever we’ve called SPS with a question, our call is immediately answered by a knowledgeable person. Just last week one of our retailers contacted us with a special request to customize their barcode labels. We contacted SPS and the new label was ready for our use almost immediately. This responsiveness has been noticed by all of us at Eastman, and our retail customers have commented on how doing business with us is even better. There are very few IT vendors that I would recommend, but SPS is clearly one of them.”