Background
Laird Superfood markets all-natural energy sources, such as creamers, sweeteners and hydration products. Founded in 2015, Laird expanded its grocery and retail business in 2017, with a growth pace of 275 percent year over year.
Issue
With business on such a fast growth track, Laird quickly outgrew the QuickBooks Enterprise platform due to key missing functionality and lack of scalability. A new platform needed to address three specific areas, which were a focus during their NetSuite evaluation.
- Inventory management: Laird needed real-time visibility into inventory, as well as implementation of lot tracking through their supply chain, production and shipping processes.
- Outbound shipping processes: Laird required a flexible solution to efficiently handle the shipping process for B2B and B2C customers. The solution needed to address the demands presented by each channel, along with high volume.
- Single, unified platform: Like many startups, Laird used multiple systems, leaving employees searching across platforms for accurate, actionable data. This took away focus from higher value work within the operation.
Solution
Laird engaged RSM to help provide an industry-optimized solution using NetSuite’s SuiteSuccess process. This complete NetSuite solution supports Laird’s business needs, including: enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), omnichannel commerce and business intelligence with real-time visibility across the company.
With a unified platform, Laird can now account for the full life cycle of its inventory, including:
- Tracking of sales demand
- Production scheduling
- Purchasing and receipt of raw materials
- Putting raw materials into production and the related finished good outputs (using Work Orders and Assemblies)
As a final step, Laird is leveraging real-time shipping integration with FedEx, UPS and USPS to efficiently schedule, label and track shipments to customers.
Results
Laird gained several efficiencies by leveraging SuiteSuccess and NetSuite’s unified platform with multiple modules versus multiple disconnected systems. With a real-time platform throughout all channels, Laird now operates with a single source of reliable information. Visibility into inventory was a critical pain point, and now the company has a single view of customers, orders, items and inventory. Laird can view raw materials on hand and now has the ability to order when items are running low. Laird’s new scalable platform can grow with the company as it expands into the grocery wholesale level. The company can also enhance the website for more innovative productsto come.
