<h1>Increased productivity to support their ‘Same Day as Baked’ delivery promise.</h1>
Freestyle Solutions Enables Carolina Cookie to Bake, Pack, and Ship the Same Day
Company Uses Multichannel Order Manager to Expand into New Business Channels and Grow
The only way – fresh every day!
That’s the promise at the Carolina Cookie Company, where gourmet cookies are always baked in the tradition of homemade Southern hospitality. The cookies are mouth-watering treats made the old fashioned way, fresh each and every day. And every Carolina Cookie is baked, packed and shipped by hand, because they know you wouldn’t have it any other way!
Located in Greensboro, North Carolina, Carolina Cookie has been in business for 25 years. The cookies are a celebration of the finest ingredients and unsurpassed quality. Smooth creamy butter, luscious chunks of rich chocolate, real fruit and fresh whole nuts are just a sampling of the abundant goodness found in each flavor of Carolina Cookies.
And every delicious selection is a testament to the timeless art of hand-baking, because the cookies are baked fresh each morning. Whether you’re ordering for a friend or for a customer, for yourself or for your family, the Carolina Cookie guarantee is simple: If your cookies were shipped today, they were baked today!
Business Opportunities and Challenges
It was 25 years ago when Carolina Cookie Company turned on the ovens and started offering fresh-baked cookies in mall retail stores in North Carolina. Word-of-mouth spread about the delicious cookies and soon the company expanded into mail order. As catalogs were sent out, the business began to grow, but it didn’t take long to uncover bottlenecks in the order and fulfillment processes.
The company built its reputation on shipping out cookies on the same day they are baked, but they needed to automate their back office processes and increase productivity in order to keep up with the demand. That’s when they turned to Multichannel Order Manager (M.O.M.) from Freestyle Solutions.
“…As Carolina Cookie company expanded into new business channels from retail to mail order to online, M.O.M. has been there to enable us to grow.”
– Nancy Miller, Carolina Cookie Company, IT-Website Operations Manager
Carolina Cookie Company has been a Multichannel Order Manager (M.O.M.) customer since 1996. In 1998, the company expanded its retail distribution channels by launching their eCommerce storefront to take online orders. They were using a local platform for the website but as orders increased, they realized its limitations and switched to an eCommerce website from CommerceV3 (CV3).
With over 10,000 catalog and eCommerce customers, Freestyle Solutions has handled the unique business needs of order taking and processing in a wide variety of vertical markets. Freestyle Solutions has the tailored M.O.M. order processing to handle the specific needs of just about any vertical specialty, including food and beverage, toys and games, sporting goods and many others.
Freestyle Solutions customers collectively generate more than $200 million in sales each month. Freestyle Solutions clients’ growth/results reveal industry trends, insights into the needs of small to medium sized businesses and what has been most effective in helping them grow. It’s that experience which has enabled Freestyle Solutions to support Carolina Cookie in its growth efforts.
Results: A Tasty Combination
Carolina Cookie Company continues to rely on M.O.M. to streamline and automate key processes to ensure fresh baked goods arrive on its customers’ doorsteps with each order. They also take advantage of M.O.M.’s Address Correction and Verification Module (ACVM) to verify each and every address on an order. This not only saves them from additional shipping fees for incorrect addresses but also improves customer service because packages arrive on time.
The company recently upgraded to M.O.M. Version 8, Premium Edition, to enhance the performance with SQL Server. In addition, an expanded strategic partnership with CV3 enables them to seamlessly sync and manage inventory, order processing, fulfillment and shipping between the two solutions. This integration helps eCommerce merchants increase productivity while reducing time spent on back office processes.
Nancy Miller, IT-Website Operations Manager for Carolina Cookie Company, comments, “My whole job is done using M.O.M. and it handles everything from PCI compliance, accounts receivable, and reporting to inventory management, order fulfillment, and shipping. A large percentage of our orders come in during November and December, and we need to add 23 people to our staff to handle the holiday volume. M.O.M. easily grows with us and helps us manage this spike in volume so that we continue to provide those fresh-baked cookies to our customers!”
Solution: M.O.M. Bakes Up More Sales
M.O.M. is the leading integrated eCommerce and PCI compliant order management software built for eCommerce, multichannel and distribution businesses. From shopping to shipping, M.O.M. manages the critical aspects of a business to be sure that their inventory is always accurate, orders ship smoothly and the company’s customer service team can respond with confidence. With M.O.M, you can:
- Quickly enter customer selections, calculate shipping charges, return shipper tracking numbers and take payment information.
- Integrate your purchasing function to help you establish the best inventory levels for each stock item.
- Take advantage of the powerful API and the ability to interface with any eCommerce system and import orders.