RESPECT OF FLORIDA

The Challenge:

MOVING FROM OUTDATED TECHNOLOGY AND MANUAL PROCESSES TO DIGITAL COMMERCE

As a nonprofit, RESPECT of Florida runs on a lean budget. In the past, the organization’s e-commerce site was created and hosted at a low cost by a technology company that worked on other projects for the state. But, as both companies expanded over the years, the partnership was no longer an ideal fit and it made sense for RESPECT of Florida to transition off of its current platform to one that was a better fit. 

It was good timing. RESPECT had been running its e-commerce site on old, outdated technology that was no longer serving the needs of its customers well. RESPECT had several individual, disparate systems working to solve a complex set of problems. Its minimal product and order management system interface only allowed basic product listing and online ordering.

The site was not connected to the punchout system within My Florida Marketplace, a site that state agencies use for purchasing — forcing buyers to engage in manual purchase processes. Any time customers wanted to order products from the site, they had to download RoF’s line item catalog and enter all of the items they wanted to order into a requisition form and email that form to RESPECT. RESPECT then had to manually enter that order into its system. 

Because the vast majority of the procurement process happened through this email ordering process, human error and unwanted processing delays were more likely to occur. “It was a long, arduous process,” Yon says. “And it was incredibly inefficient.”

Additionally, RESPECT had a manual process for collecting payments, typically through email. And there was no backend integration to the corporate accounting system. All accounting functions happened through manual, human-driven processes as well — introducing unreliable and varying results in processing cycle and accuracy. 

With the right solutions, the site had the potential to do so much more than its technology at the time allowed. That’s where QAD Digital Commerce stepped in.

The Solution:

FULL-SERVICE, FLEXIBLE, ALL-IN-ONE DIGITAL COMMERCE PLATFORM

After winning the RFP, QAD Digital Commerce got to work. The team worked closely with RESPECT to truly understand the organization’s needs and goals and set a path toward not only meeting them, but exceeding them. 

“There was nothing we asked for that QAD Digital Commerce couldn’t do,” Yon says. “Even if they didn’t already have the solution — they were able to figure it out for us. They were very flexible and worked with us on our timeline. It was a great fit.”

For the new, more robust site, the QAD Digital Commerce team implemented a full-service, all-in-one solution, including:

• Interface design and implementation: QAD Digital Commerce provided a wide selection of standard templates that RESPECT could customize and update to fit its needs.
• Data migration: QAD Digital Commerce evaluated and worked with RESPECT to migrate all product and customer data from the existing proprietary system over to the QAD Digital Commerce system.
• Infrastructure hosting: RESPECT requested a private hosting environment, so QAD Digital Commerce implemented its world-class private cloud hosting solution to fulfill all security, privacy and compliance initiatives outlined by RESPECT.
• Data encryption: To fulfill various company-specific order processing encryption needs, QAD Digital Commerce designed and implemented custom encryption techniques using standardized encryption algorithms and methods, allowing flexible and effective solutions to complex issues.
• Enterprise resource planning (ERP) integration and automation: QAD Digital Commerce team developed several customized automation techniques and security mechanisms to enable secure, automated integration of product and order data with the existing ERP system — reducing manual entry, as well as error frequency
• Distributed fulfillment center order management: Any given order was likely to be fulfilled by one of the Employment Centers, which holds all the inventory RESPECT sells. So QAD Digital Commerce implemented a customized order processing mechanism allowing orders to be automatically routed and allocated to the appropriate Employment Center, similar to an Amazon order.
• Fulfillment center data entry and collection interfaces: QAD Digital Commerce provided the Employment Centers with an interface to access an order and update with related order and status information for shipping and tracking.
• Customer order support interfaces: Customer order support representatives historically managed all RESPECT orders and order data via email. QAD Digital Commerce’s platform provided user interfaces where the customer order support group could log in and manage orders inside the system. QAD Digital Commerce also provided an interface that allowed the support team to walk the customer through the ordering process when necessary.
• Punch-out functionality: Punch-out catalog interface functionality was one of the most critical new capabilities on the site. QAD Digital Commerce implemented Punch-out functionality to enable the State of Florida purchasing departments to access products for sale by RESPECT through My Florida Marketplace — better enabling access to RESPECT products by State departments with better visibility within the interface.

QAD Digital Commerce and RESPECT began working on the new site in spring and deployed the first version in the fall of the same year. Two months later, they launched the Punch-Out capabilities. Since then, the site has gone through various updates to add more features as the organization grows.

The Benefits:

MORE SALES AND MORE COMMUNITY SUPPORT

QAD Digital Commerce’s all-in-one platform has proved successful for RESPECT. It provided RESPECT, its stakeholders and customers a single system to process and manage all functions related to the entry and processing of an order. By allowing for credit card acceptance, the site became available to a whole host of new users. It improved compliance and captured better metrics for ongoing planning and KPI measurement, enabling process improvements across all internal and Employment Center processes. 

By improving the ordering, processing and tracking mechanisms through the QAD Digital Commerce platform, RESPECT was able to increase the reach into the community and ultimately conversion rates. This boost in sales means the organization is providing more opportunities for Floridians with disabilities to achieve maximum personal independence through useful, gainful and productive employment.

*QAD Digital Commerce was formerly known as WebJaguar