Partnering with onboarding experts accelerates 3PL speed to revenue

The challenge

Owen Allen Solutions (OAS) is a third-party logistics (3PL) provider specializing in fulfillment services. With over 50 years of experience in retail and logistics, they partner with clients to handle the complexities of shipping and compliance.

Whether handling direct-to-consumer shipments or delivering to retailer stores or DCs, OAS needs to keep products moving efficiently. But while they excelled at setting up operations for new clients, from warehouse setup to getting receipts in the system, the complexities of integration with retailers could be a slow, painful process.

While OAS was already well-versed in the importance of EDI solutions, their experience working with another provider wasn’t delivering as promised. Too many connections to new retailers required mapping from scratch, a process that could take months.

And in a business where your speed to revenue is paramount, if you’re slow to onboard your suppliers, you’re losing money.

The solution

Based on their positive experience working with SPS on a previous ordering management system, OAS knew that SPS provided expertise they could count on. By integrating their WMS, Shipedge, with SPS for 3PLs, they’re now able to access 1 million pre-built connections and a network of more than 120,000 retail supply chain partners.

By using a full-service solution that provides a single integration for all customers, locations and channels, they could accelerate onboarding with a repeatable process to swiftly and accurately connect with customers while meeting retailer and shipper requirements.

The results

Now when a client calls OAS with the exciting news they’ll be shipping products to a new retailer like Target or Walmart, they can use SPS pre-built integrations to connect far more quickly.

“When we get a new client that needs to connect to a retailer that SPS has pre-built connections with, it can be done in days, rather than months,” says Jada Mason, OAS Vice President.

The extensive SPS Commerce retail network makes it more likely than not that no matter the business, a pre-built connection may already exist. If it doesn’t, SPS has the experience and expertise to make the process as quick and painless as possible.

OAS is now seeing their direct-to-consumer orders 99.9% fulfilled within 24 hours or less, and compliance levels with retailers have reached 99% within the last 12 months.

Another benefit to partnering with SPS Commerce is access to a full-service team. For OAS clients without IT resources, SPS provides expert customer service to work through any setup issues, and ongoing support to keep connections up-to-date and running smoothly.

“Most of our clients don’t have an IT person, so SPS being able to speak to their needs without being too tech-heavy is very helpful,” said Zach Lucht, OAS Vice President, IT.

The connection with SPS continues to benefit their clients, as OAS continues to partner with SPS to vet new ideas and test functionalities to develop even better solutions.

As SPS Product Director, Tracey Ortiz, notes, “By partnering on live use cases, SPS helps convert messy integrations into repeatable connections and compliant labels. The payoff for 3PLs is time and focus—they can build high-impact services, like robust returns, while we keep them retailer-ready.”

OAS also uses the SPS Shipping Label API to generate compliant shipping labels. While they can manually generate labels through Fulfillment so clients can ship from day one, once clients have their retail connections set up, they can automate retail-specific label creation. This ensures compliance and helps them avoid chargebacks.

This partnership has been running so smoothly that OAS recommends SPS Commerce for EDI as a preferred solution, with 95% of their clients using SPS in some way.