©2017 Data Masons Software | 1605 Main St. | Suite 610 | Sarasota, FL 34236 | 1.866.575.1631 www.datamasons.com | 1

Bringing Multi-Manufacturing Processes Under One Roofgood2grow® Founder and CEO Jim Scott puts it simply: “good2grow® is committed to healthy habits that last a lifetime. We put a beverage parents want their children to drink in a package that kids will want to drink from.” good2grow®, founded in 2001, is a family owned and operated company based in Atlanta, Georgia that lives, sleeps and dreams healthy kids drinks. They are constantly investing in top-quality beverages, packaging technology, state-of-the-art manufacturing, and the freshest, most nutritious ingredients available.

The Best of Problems good2grow® was faced with one of the best problems a company could have. Thanks to a combination of partnerships with large vendors and large retail customers, they had to figure out how to keep up with order volumes that were increasing exponentially. With an entire team dedicated to entering orders manually they were barely keeping up. With volume growing that fast, they needed a better solution, with software and systems that could keep pace with the growth and integrate with Macola ERP.

good2grow® IT Manager Nick Hutchens explains that, “We had an expanded customer base, so our efficiencies needed to be expanded. Our business models had to change, for example we outsourced our warehousing, and we needed software to support them.” From Hutchens’ perspective what they needed most was, “flexibility and scalability so we could use our in-house dev team to build out all the processes.”

Finding Their Advantage in Vantage Point Working with their partner, iPro, Inc., they chose Vantage Point EDI by Data Masons. “Data Masons made it easy, giving us the tools to make it work any way we wanted,” explains Hutchens. This enabled good2grow® to reduce down to more streamlined processes. They had hundreds of customers which had to be onboarded quickly, plus a growing broker network, and the challenges of switching to a new outsourced logistics model.

Their Challenge

Vantage Point EDI Helps good2grow® Become Good To Grow!

GOOD2GROW® AND DATA MASONS SOFTWARE CASE STUDY

As good2grow® expanded their

market reach with more vendors

and larger retail cusotmers,

along came an unexpected

sacrifice. Their customer service

team went from focusing on

customers, to being a data entry

team. In addition to the errors

associated with manual data

entry, good2grow wanted to get

their team back to their original

mission, helping customers.

Through Vantage Point EDI’s

processing platform, not only have

they become automated with

99% effeciency, but the platform

allowed for additional integrations

and benefits they never expected.

©2017 Data Masons Software | 1605 Main St. | Suite 610 | Sarasota, FL 34236 | 1.866.575.1631 www.datamasons.com | 2

Good2grow® Vice President of IT Patrick Federich agrees. “Most important was flexibility,” says Federich, “something we could use and customize to align with our company and our customers’ needs.”

The top priority was to eliminate manual order entry by scheduling tasks. “The Scheduler in Data Masons’ Vantage Point EDI solution is unbelievable. You can schedule everything behind the scenes and don’t have to touch it. It does the work for you and gives you an error message whenever there’s an issue.”

Federich points out that the value of the Scheduler in Vantage Point is enhanced by the Mapping capabilities inherent in the software. “Another flexibility we appreciated was to have several types of maps right out of the box without having to hire anyone to create them for us. I’m very impressed in our relationship with Data Masons to see them analyze, study, and make sure everything in the software was good for us and flexible enough to allow us to grow even more and faster.”

Hutchens adds, “The Mapper brings great flexibility. It allows us to do pretty much anything we want and the Scheduler allows us to do it hands-off. We set it up with the Mapper the first time, then we can schedule it to run and nobody has to touch it.”

Quantifiable ResultsHutchens estimates that good2grow® is now 99% efficient with their customer ordering process, estimating that only 12 orders had to be manually entered in the past month out of thousands placed. He’s also pleased that good2grow® enjoys almost 100% green operations through the use of EDI transactions. “We focused first on the customer side,” explains Hutchens. “Now we’re focusing on the supply side this year. Bringing in new types of transactions including “pop-order” transactions. A lot of growth advantages there.” Federich has also observed some very positive results.

“Being able to be closer to our customers, and being able to integrate those orders automatically into our systems are significant benefits due to Vantage Point,” lists Federich. “I’m talking about companies like Walmart and Home Depot which are actually generating hundreds of specific orders by location. It used to take our entire full-time team to enter all those orders. When we implemented EDI automation, orders were entered into our system automatically as they came in with nobody ever touching them.”

He adds, “It’s the same thing on the invoicing side. Invoices are generated automatically with nobody having to select the orders, print the invoice, mail the invoice, etc. This is a real big time saver for us.”

The End of Paying to Give Things Away for Free

Given the high number of transactions processed to ship free samples and swatches, the fees charged by the Value Added Network (VAN) used by the embedded providers to communicate each transaction would mean good2grow® would end up paying to give those items away for free. Federich sees the most important result coming in what he refers to as “human capital efficiency.” “Instead of a team of six or seven entering orders all day,” explains Federich, “we have two or three people now actually taking the time to talk to customers and providing excellent customer service. We saw our customer service team transition from order-takers to people who could take the time to take good care of customers.” Vantage Point EDI software has helped good2grow® enhance their customers’ experience!

Vantage Point had

all the key points.

All the documents,

and all the associated

EDI transactions that

would allow the system

to handle orders on a

scheduled basis and not

have a person sitting at

a computer all the time

doing that.

With 99% efficiency, customer

service reps can now get back

to focusing on customers and

not data entry. Increasing

“human capital efficiency” allows

good2grow to once again provide

the excellent customer service

which their customers have come

to expect.

- Nick Hutchens, IT Manager, good2grow®

GOOD2GROW® AND DATA MASONS SOFTWARE CASE STUDY

©2017 Data Masons Software | 1605 Main St. | Suite 610 | Sarasota, FL 34236 | 1.866.575.1631 www.datamasons.com | 3

No need for email nor fax orders any longer, orders are submitted into their web portal which go directly into their systems via EDI.

Their warranty requests also go through a website and a custom order in EDI which automatically creates requests sent directly into their system.

The Customer Service team now simply has to review and approve the orders, no need for manual entry any longer.

Watch Nick Hutchens and Patrick Federich share their customer stories at datamasons.com/snapshots.

good2grow has experienced

99% efficiency using Vantage

Point.

Beyond EDIBoth Federich and Hutchens were pleasantly surprised to discover how much they could accomplish with Vantage Point that went beyond their customary expectations of EDI software. Says Hutchens, “The biggest surprise was being able to do more with it than we thought we could with EDI. 99% efficiency processing Web orders enabled us to drive our brokers to partner with us through EDI. They don’t email or fax orders to us anymore. They all go into our web portal to submit orders which go through EDI directly into our system.”

He continues, explaining, “They submit their warranty requests through the website which go through a custom order in EDI and automatically creates requests in EDI that are sent directly into our system. The Customer Service team just has to review and approve. No manual entry anymore. Everything flows automatically between our systems. They get their orders fulfilled faster. It’s a better customer experience.”

Hutchens reflects on how they were able to set up a complete warranty claims system using Vantage Point. What he had thought would be a very manual system was easily automated with EDI.

He then returns to their outsourced warehouse partners. “They do packing and co-packing for us. They’re very heavy into EDI too, so we’ve partnered with them to create a way to send them a work order through EDI and have them reply with all the lot components and quantities of everything they used to make that order. We then accept it into our system and automatically process on our side, closing it out and giving us full traceability down to the lot level.”

Good2grow® also brought on an external Transportation Management System (TMS) program which was tied directly to their Macola ERP system via Data Masons’ EDI. “We can now rate our carriers, pick our orders, confirm shipment, get tracking automated, get carriers invoices all automated via EDI and fully integrated with MercuryGate TMS.”

They also built ocean freight tracking using EDI documents from Vantage Point from all of their ocean freight activity in China. “We send container booking and they send back all the tracking info through EDI which we’re able to display in our supply chain website.”Federich concludes, “As we started to use Vantage Point we found some great functionality that we didn’t think of when we started. This was a good surprise.” This extension of the Vantage Point EDI solution platform allowed good2grow® to gain unexpected value, further solidifying that this was the perfect EDI solution for them.

EDI Made Simple

EDI is all we do at Data Masons. Embedded EDI providers are often programming compa-nies that work on many different projects other than EDI, which can cause them to lose focus. We’re solely focused on EDI.

For more information about how to put Vantage Point EDI to work making EDI simple in your company, contact us at datamasons.com and learn more about EDI and ERP integration in our executive briefs.

GOOD2GROW® AND DATA MASONS SOFTWARE CASE STUDY