No More Babysitting Technology
Once running on Acumatica, the POLYWOOD’s technology or office teams didn’t need to stop regular tasks to help ship products.
“We had our biggest invoicing day that summer, and we didn’t even realize it was happening. The technology teams weren’t any busier,”
says Leedy.
“Acumatica has allowed the business to grow. The system just operates; we don’t have to sit there and watch it, or babysit it.”
Adds Valencourt,
“It’s enabled us to actually work on the business again where before we were using shoestring and bubblegum to take care of our technical debt. Now we have a solid platform where we’ve been able to start making life easier for the business.”
“A few years ago, our peak season was revealing every crack in our systems. Now thanks to an amazing operational team and a better technical platform, we’re able to ship virtually everything on time. It’s very busy, but it’s not crazy, because we were able to apply technology to make processes better. Instead of fixing bugs all the time, the technology team is building new things.”
The technology team of 65, which includes an ERP team of seven, focuses on making processes and departments as efficient as possible.
“It helps that with Acumatica’s APIs and the ways we now get information, orders get ingested into the system automatically,” says Leedy.
“We’re getting that information to production and to purchasing quicker and not having to wait for batch uploads. We have more real-time data and reporting that is helping the business. No one has to wait until the next day to find out what happened.”
Real-time data allows POLYWOOD executives to make decisions in real time, something that didn’t happen previously.
“We are getting orders ingested, we’re getting them cycled through the system to get build dates. We’re streamlining the processes on the system to help get the information to production about what needs to be built, when it needs to be built, and what it’s going to take to build it,” says Leedy.
“Acumatica provides the data in real time to the individuals that need it.”
The company’s growth is no longer hindered by a legacy financial system. “Now we have something that can scale and grow with us,” says Valencourt.
POLYWOOD isn’t constrained by expensive per-seat licensing. “We don’t have to worry about obtaining 100 new user-licenses or whether we can bring a department on because we have the flexibility to do that now. With a stable system, we can add applications that can help us grow the business,” Leedy says.
Seamlessly Connected Apps
POLYWOOD’s manufacturing execution system (MES) was previously a siloed shop floor-like system that didn’t share information with its prior ERP. “But now its integrated with Acumatica, which helps with MRP and inventory,” Valencourt says. “Acumatica is the system of record for everything, financials, bill of materials, etc., whereas before, some of that only lived in the MES, which wasn’t ideal.”
The company added ShipHawk uniting parcel, LTL and freight broker services in a single platform and automating many of the documentation, warehouse and inventory tasks associated with shipping. This reduced POLYWOOD’s shipping times while eliminating many manual tasks.
With Kensium’s connection between Acumatica and Magento, orders are seamlessly and automatically processed, including payment acceptance. Avalara’s tax application allows POLYWOOD to automatically apply the correct state sales taxes while its adoption of Optimizely has made for an easy-to-user ordering portal for POLYWOOD dealers.
In addition to creating more detailed reports and drill down within Acumatica, POLYWOOD deployed Velixo, which allows executives to slice and dice data in a myriad of ways they couldn’t previously. “It’s a lot easier to troubleshoot data issues if items get posted in the wrong area,” Leedy says. “The ability to customize the reporting dashboards are critical.”
POLYWOOD’s finance team previously had elaborate spreadsheets that took a lot of time to manually update with exports.
“Now they are able to pull data quickly, and that’s been a big plus,” Leedy says.
Platform Built for the Future
Both Leedy and Valencourt praised Acumatica for taking an open and flexible approach to the platform’s development, listening and cultivating customer input, and striving to keep improving its business system.
“Acumatica is a modern ERP that’s built to scale with a large and hungry team behind it,” says Valencourt.
“It’s actively being developed with two releases a year. It’s well supported, extremely flexible, customizable, and it scales. And its API-first.”
Adds Leedy, “I like that Acumatica has a roadmap for what’s coming in the future. With many other ERPs, you don’t know what they are developing. At Acumatica’s Summit, you get a pretty clear roadmap about what future releases will be, so if you’re looking to grow your business, Acumatica is looking to grow too.”
New Products, New Markets
POLYWOOD has been the leader in developing casual outdoor furniture with plastic lumber for the past 30 years. It is now moving upscale and offering furniture aimed at designers. The company partnered with Martha Stewart, Country Living Magazine and launched several new Designer Series outdoor furniture collections. Earlier this year, it also opened an 11,000-square-foot designer showroom in Atlanta that showcases its new product lines.
With a state-of-the-art technology platform that allows it to rapidly scale, lean manufacturing processes that minimize waste, and a multitude of new designer products, POLYWOOD is poised for continued fast growth.
“We are on the path to becoming a sustainable lifestyle brand,” Doug Rassi, president, CEO and co-founder, said in a press release. “We will continue to expand furniture collections, and we continually talk about other product lines and their priorities. I view the POLYWOOD world as a never-ending expansion.”
Adds Valencourt,
“Acumatica can scale with us, and we can scale with Acumatica. There’s no business process or customization that we have that Acumatica isn’t able to support because we don’t just have to use Acumatica out of the box. We can build on top of it. And that’s been
really key for us.”
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