Integration- Using Solomon Order Entry with Remote Fulfillment House

One of our clients, Ritchey Design is a Solomon Order Management user. They are a distributor for bicycle parts and accessory. For business reasons they choose to relocate their onsite inventory system to a remote warehouse, which is out of state.

The remote warehouse is owned by a separate company, who for a fee stocks their inventory and provides fulfillment of orders upon the request of the Solomon system. The fulfillment warehouse has their separate warehouse tracking software.

Solomon is used to place the initial orders, which come in from a combination of phone and fax orders. The decision to release the shipper for creation of a pick list is done within the Solomon system. Instead of creating a standard pick report, we generate a special report which is a list of multiple packing slips in a simple columnar format. This report is printed to screen, and then we use the Crystal feature of exporting this information to an excel file. The excel file is then emailed to their remote warehouse. At the warehouse, this excel file is imported into their warehouse system and picking tickets are generated. At the end of the day, the remote warehouse sends a summary excel file, in a predefined format, which tells which shippers and skus were shipped and the manifest tracking numbers. This shipping daily report is attached to an email back to our sales department at Ritchey. This excel file, is then imported through a special enhance we created in Solomon; and effectively completes two Solomon OM screens: shipment confirmation and manifest entry.

This approach could be used whether you had one or multiple remote warehouses. As far as the Solomon Inventory system is concerned, we are tracking all quantities and prices for the remote warehouse as just a warehouse site. All orders, all shipper, all QOH and cost information, all manifest tracking numbers are in the Solomon system. The remote warehouse provides a service, which yields lower operating costs to the Ritchey organization; while continuing to process all orders in Solomon.