Exhart, a garden decor company serving the largest US big box and home improvement retailers, had experienced continuing growth for years. With that growth, their supply chain management process couldn’t keep up.
Exhart’s supply chain process consisted of sending emails, attaching spreadsheets, and juggling phone calls across global time zones. It was not rare for things to slip through the cracks; orders were late, products with errors were shipped. The process wasn’t working anymore - it was too manual, too prone to errors, and it relied on a handful of employees with much of the information stored in their emails. Important facts were hard to find and access. They were constantly dealing with emergencies that could have been smoothly prevented. Exhart’s CEO and CFO knew they needed to improve or totally replace the existing process. This is when they turned to TradeDash.
Exhart Profile:
Global garden decor manufacturer and distributor. Customers include big box retailers and home improvement retailers.
The Exhart team knew it was time to transition to a supply chain management software solution that would connect their global teams in a collaborative platform. The platform would have to enable streamlined communication and document sharing to pull the process out of email inboxes and excel spreadsheets – turning it all into a task and deadline based process where the status of the order is transparent to everyone.
Exhart chose the TradeDash platform for these key capabilities:
TradeDash combines all the POs and shipments in an order and creates a project that is managed from one collaborative platform.
Another criteria in Exhart’s choice was the TradeDash white-glove customer success program.
The TradeDash approach to operationalize a supply chain process includes:
With TradeDash, Exhart began managing new Sales Orders to final delivery of goods — accessing structured communications and all relevant documents in the Order Dashboard. The new visibility and organization of their PO information created value right away for Exhart.
The first step to operationalize Exhart’s supply chain was integrating Exhart’s CRM and ERP (Microsoft Dynamics) to automatically hand-off new orders to TradeDash. Since then, whenever a sales order, quote or PO is generated in the ERP or CRM, it is automatically sent to TradeDash, where an Order Dashboard is created to track and organize all tasks, communications, documents, shipments as well as all Sales Order and PO data.
TradeDash is also integrated with Exhart’s other key applications to share necessary information used during the fulfillment of each order. TradeDash built integrations to Exhart’s:
After using TradeDash for their first orders, Exhart was hooked. The TradeDash platform became their single source of truth for their supply chain. No more searching in their emails to find an important piece of information, or to parse out emails to find the right attachment. Since TradeDash also manages version control for all documents, the team was sure that they were looking at the correct version; with previous versions listed by date and referenceable in case they were needed.
Hear from Exhart’s VP of Operations on implementing TradeDash
Exhart happily abandoned their old manual process and quickly began using TradeDash for all new orders. This allowed their teams – across time zones – to access order information, shipment information, and documentation in one place. No more desperate hunting all over the place. The teams started making decisions faster and errors were eliminated. Exhart teams were also delighted at how much easier it was to see and manage potential issues – ranging from internal delays to external disruptions. With TradeDash, a deadline can be updated in the Order Dashboard to create a revised Gantt chart for stakeholder evaluation.
Exhart’s business was already successful, with increased growth a sign of that success. With TradeDash they now can manage and grow with fewer supply chain crises, with less risk, and with smoother running operations.
With TradeDash, Exhart is now using their project data to drive business intelligence. Thanks to their other key applications being integrated with TradeDash, they now have centralized data for all orders. TradeDash creates a single source of truth of the data and is used to generate business insights. TradeDash creates customized reporting for Exhart's individual business needs to:
Now, with TradeDash, Exhart creates data-rich, actionable insights to manage their business, protect margins, and improve strategic decisions.
TradeDash is a modern supply chain platform that automates workflows, communications, and provides a single source of truth for your supply chain operations.
Eliminate email overload, hunting for spreadsheet versions, and frustration while you gain complete operational visibility, customer satisfaction, and improved margins.
