Liquid Death Gains Full Visibility Of EDI with Orderful

Business Challenge: The Drive to Bring EDI In-House

Liquid Death, a rapidly growing healthy beverage company, has made a name for itself with its unique branding and commitment to sustainability. Known for its innovative marketing and popular products like its mountain water, flavored sparkling water and iced tea, Liquid Death operates in a highly competitive market and manages a significant volume of retail transactions.

As the company scaled, it faced challenges with managing its EDI processes. Initially relying on external service providers, Liquid Death dealt with delayed setups, lack of visibility, and dependency on these providers for every minor change.

Derek Wu, the Business Applications Manager at Liquid Death, is responsible for overseeing integrations with systems like NetSuite, 3PL, and Shopify. Derek saw the inefficiencies firsthand. The external managed services were slow, often taking 4-8 weeks to onboard new trading partners, and provided little insight into the EDI processes. This setup made it difficult for Liquid Death to be agile and responsive in a fast-paced market.

Recognizing the need for a more efficient and transparent solution, Liquid Death decided to bring EDI management in-house. This shift aimed to reduce dependency on external parties, gain better control over the processes, and improve overall operational efficiency. The challenge was to find a modern EDI solution that could seamlessly integrate with their existing systems and provide the flexibility and visibility they needed.

The Solution: Speed, Cost, and Flexibility

Liquid Death faced a pressing need to bring their EDI processes in-house to gain control, improve visibility, and enhance operational efficiency. The dependency on slow managed service providers was not sustainable, especially as the company continued to scale rapidly. The external providers often took 4-8 weeks to onboard new trading partners, and the lack of visibility into EDI processes led to inefficiencies and potential errors.

Orderful offered several critical advantages that aligned perfectly with Liquid Death’s needs:

• Seamless Integration: Orderful’s modern EDI Solution provides an aggregate integration experience across any trading partners and transactions. Orderful already had connectors built to Liquid Death’s system of record so Liquid Death was able to easily integrate and immediately start trading with any supply chain partner, eliminating the need for repeated custom integrations.
• User-Friendly Platform: The platform's intuitive interface and clear guidelines made the integration process straightforward. Derek Wu, the Business Applications Manager, noted how Orderful’s user-friendly design allowed them to quickly understand and navigate the system, reducing the learning curve and accelerating the implementation process.

• Real-Time Validation and Error Handling: One of the standout features of Orderful is its validation engine, which tests EDI data against specific trading partner requirements in real-time. Unlike other providers that validate data only against the x12 standards, Orderful's software ensures compliance with each partner's unique requirements, providing immediate feedback on what needs to be fixed in the transactions. This capability significantly reduced the time and effort required for testing and minimized costly errors during onboarding.
• Rules Engine for Compliance: Orderful’s rules engine further enhanced Liquid Death’s EDI processes. The engine enabled them to identify potential compliance issues with their trading partners and resolve them in real-time. With just a click, the system provided suggestions for transformations, and complex rules could be written to address any transformation challenges. This feature ensured that Liquid Death maintained high standards of accuracy and compliance in their EDI transactions.
• Hyper-Responsive Support: Throughout the implementation, Orderful’s team of EDI experts provided exceptional support. Derek highlighted the proactive and quick response times from the support team, sometimes within minutes. This high level of responsiveness was crucial in addressing issues promptly and ensuring a smooth transition to the new system.

By switching to Orderful, Liquid Death regained control over their EDI processes. The company experienced several immediate benefits:

• Faster Onboarding: The time to onboard new trading partners was reduced from 4-8 weeks to just 1 week, allowing Liquid Death to be more agile and responsive to market demands.
• Improved Visibility and Error Handling: With real-time validation and proactive error handling, Liquid Death could identify and address issues before transactions were sent out, reducing errors and improving overall efficiency.
• Cost Savings: Bringing EDI in-house with Orderful reduced dependency on managed service providers and saved costs associated with chargebacks and delays.

Overall, Orderful’s modern EDI platform empowered Liquid Death to streamline their operations, enhance visibility, and maintain their rapid growth trajectory. The combination of seamless integration, robust validation, efficient error handling, and exceptional support ensured that Liquid Death could meet their EDI needs effectively and efficiently.

The Results: 4x Faster to Go Live Than Other EDI Solutions

Reduction in Time to Set Up Trading Partners

The time to onboard new trading partners was dramatically reduced from 4-8 weeks to just 1 week, representing an 80% reduction. This allowed Liquid Death to be more agile and responsive to market demands. "With Orderful, we can onboard new partners in a fraction of the time it used to take," Derek noted.

Times Faster to Go Live Than Other EDI Solutions

Orderful’s efficient integration and real-time validation engine enabled Liquid Death to go live 4 times faster compared to their previous EDI solution. This rapid implementation was crucial for meeting tight deadlines and ensuring continuity.

Error Resolutions

With Orderful’s proactive error handling and real-time validation, Liquid Death could identify and address issues before transactions were sent out, reducing errors and improving overall efficiency. "Orderful allows us to catch errors right away and resolve them quickly, which means less back-and-forth with our trading partners," said Derek.

Visibility of Transactions

Orderful’s platform provided complete visibility into EDI transactions, allowing Liquid Death to maintain control over their order-to-cash process and ensure timely order fulfillment. "With Orderful, we have visibility and control over our EDI. It's great to finally own the keys to the kingdom and not rely on outside parties," Derek added.

By partnering with Orderful, Liquid Death successfully transitioned to an in-house EDI management system, achieving faster integration times, and improved error handling. The combination of seamless integration, robust validation, efficient error handling, and exceptional support ensured that Liquid Death could meet their EDI needs effectively and continue their rapid growth trajectory.

About Liquid Death

As one of the fastest growing non-alcoholic beverage brands, Liquid Death uses comedy and entertainment to make health and sustainability 50 times more fun. We take the healthiest things you can drink and package it into infinitely recyclable cans that compete with the fun marketing of unhealthy brands across energy drinks, beer, and junk food. Our product lines include mountain water, sparkling mountain water, sparkling flavored water, iced tea, and our hydration sticks, Death Dust. A portion of Liquid Death’s proceeds goes to nonprofits who are helping fight plastic pollution and bring clean drinking water to those in need. For more information on Liquid Death please visit liquiddeath.com.