Stirring up success: Household goods brand returned to SPS for proven performance

The challenge

When this consumer goods brand began scaling into national retailers, they needed an EDI platform that could grow with them. After successfully launching with SPS Commerce, early support frustrations made them receptive to another provider offering a cheaper, “modern” alternative, promising seamless NetSuite integration and minimal IT involvement.

The new provider’s “production-ready” integration turned out to be in beta. Instead of automation, everything required manual setup. Each retailer demanded custom rules and scripts, and label generation had to be done manually.

Then came the breaking point: a high-volume shipment to a major department store failed completely. The system couldn’t generate the required shipping labels or handle the multi-carton volume. The competitor’s response—that no other customer had shipped at that scale—confirmed what the brand feared: they were serving as a beta tester.

Despite paying for managed services, the brand found itself managing retailer outreach, compliance testing and data coordination on its own. Retail relationships they had spent years building were suddenly at risk.

The solution

After speaking with peers in their industry, one message was consistent: retailers trust SPS Commerce. The brand’s leadership team recognized that if they wanted to scale confidently, they needed a proven platform and a partner that could deliver full-service EDI.

Once reconnected with SPS Commerce, the transformation was immediate.

SPS reconnected their fulfillment operations with a combination of automation and expertise:

• Automated label generation—no custom NetSuite datasets required
• Pre-configured retailer specifications for all major partners
• Built-in pack optimization for accurate ASNs
• Dedicated onboarding and compliance support

Implementation was swift. Their first new retailer went live in less than 30 days, a process that previously took months. The delays experienced prior to switching to SPS were largely due to the manual effort required and the time needed to onboard retailers not already supported in the competitor’s network. With SPS, manual processing dropped dramatically, and confidence among both internal teams and retailers was restored.

“With SPS Commerce, we fill out a couple of fields, click a button, and SPS does the rest. We went from spending hours on each shipment to true automation,” said their technology lead.

The results

Today, the brand’s fulfillment process is faster, more accurate and trusted by every retail partner they work with.

Since returning to SPS Commerce, they’ve achieved:

• 75% reduction in manual processing time per shipment
• First new retailer live in under 30 days
• Zero failed transactions due to system limitations
• Expanded EDI footprint across dropship and bulk fulfillment
• Renewed retailer confidence and a reputation for reliability

What began as a costly experiment turned into a lesson in the value of proven experience. The brand is now consolidating all EDI operations with SPS and planning to expand automation into new retail channels. Their Director of Technology shared, “Being on SPS Commerce gives our retail partners confidence. It’s not just about technology, it’s about trust. And that’s something you can’t automate.”