BOB LILLY PROMOTIONS

The Challenge:

MULTIPLE OLD DISPARATE E-COMMERCE SYSTEMS NOT MEETING BUSINESS NEEDS

Bob Lilly was using a number of digital commerce solutions from multiple vendors to power its various online stores. The solutions were no longer capable of meeting the demands of its clients’ businesses, including APIs and single sign-on integrations. The company needed a solution that would enable it to standardize and migrate all its sites under a single provider. 

Bob Lilly Promotions realized the disparate mix of eCommerce solutions it used to power the online stores it created for its clients was no longer capable of meeting their demands. The company had about 20 different sites scattered across multiple underperforming platforms. And some of those online stores required complex technologies—such as application programming interface (API) and single sign-on (SSO) integrations—which its existing solutions simply couldn’t support. For example, one large client was utilizing three separate sites, one of which required an API integration. 

“Each one was posed to a different market of individuals, but they all had shared products with different pricing, and there could not be any crossover of users between the product offerings,” Boyd explains. “Our team was spending a great deal of time manually cross-referencing and updating inventory levels across the multiple sites. In addition, any product changes required multiple updates.” 

Bob Lilly wanted to migrate all its sites to one central provider, and it wanted warehouse integration capabilities so that inventory updates would be automatically applied across its sites. The company wanted to have up-to-date technologies with features that would set Bob Lilly apart from its competition. And it wanted to launch a public site to showcase its brand and offer its customers, who enjoyed picking their own products, a place to do that with all of their preferred supplier items displayed with as little maintenance as possible. 

So Bob Lilly began to shop for a platform provider that could meet its complex requirements. When Boyd came across QAD Digital Commerce at an industry trade show, he found his needle in a haystack. “I realized that QAD Digital Commerce could easily support our requirements, so I immediately did further research on its capabilities, and scheduled a demonstration for a more in- depth review.

The Solution:

STREAMLINED INTERNAL SYSTEMS, ELIMINATION OF MANUAL PROCESSES WITH QAD DIGITAL COMMERCE

Soon after, Bob Lilly partnered with QAD Digital Commerce to implement its eCommerce platform for its online company store clients. “Once we made the decision to partner with QAD, the process was quick and seamless,” Boyd says. 

At the outset, QAD Digital Commerce reviewed all of Bob Lilly’s current sites and discussed the company’s unique needs, which included a warehouse, API and SSO integration. The QAD Digital Commerce development team investigated Bob Lilly’s challenges and offered solutions other providers had not been able or willing to. 

“We were then assigned a dedicated account manager, to help us with onboarding, and scheduling the migration of all our current sites over to QAD Digital Commerce,” Boyd says. 

For Bob Lilly’s public site that would showcase its brand, the company reviewed all the available QAD Digital Commerce templates and discussed the look-and-feel with the team. Then Bob Lilly selected which suppliers it wanted to list on the site, as well as its desired margin. 

“From there, QAD did all the heavy lifting in populating the site and setting up custom URLs for each of our account managers to share with their customers,” Boyd says.

The QAD Digital Commerce development team also worked with Bob Lilly’s warehouse provider to set up the warehouse inventory integration. Once this was complete, the development team began working on the custom development needed to support Bob Lilly’s special requirements while strategically migrating each of its current sites over to the new solution.

The Benefits:

ALL ONLINE STORES OF CLIENTS ARE ON A SINGLE PLATFORM, SAVING ADMINISTRATIVE TIME AND MONEY

All of Bob Lilly’s clients’ online stores are now supported by QAD Digital Commerce’s single platform, which has cut down on administrative time. Bob Lilly now has full control over the look-and-feel of its sites and has confidence that they are always up to date with the latest technology and security protocols. 

“We have had hack attempts with our sites, but they have never been able to get past the site’s security measures,” Boyd says. “I don’t feel confident that would have been the case with some QAD Digital Commerce competitors.” 

In addition, Bob Lilly did a full integration with ASI SmartBooks for both order and inventory integration. This development has streamlined the company’s internal systems eliminating many manual processes.

“This was a very large project and the QAD Digital Commerce development team did a good job of scoping out our requirements in conjunction with ASI to successfully deploy integration,” Boyd says. 

And over time, the platform has continued to adapt to Bob Lilly’s ever-growing needs. When a need arises that the platform can’t support, QAD provides alternative solutions or handles development as necessary to support those needs.

*QAD Digital Commerce was formerly known as WebJaguar.