Kavio! is a manufacturer and distributor of the Kavio! brand of basic to fashion apparel for the printing, decorating and promotional markets. Their merchandise is available online (retail and wholesale) at www.kavio.com and as private label brands through retailers such as JCPenney, Sears, K-Mart and Wal-Mart. Their products are manufactured and produced at their own state-of-the-art overseas facility, ensuring consistent high quality of every garment. Kavio! is also a dedicated supporter of local schools, neighborhoods and non-profit organizations, with a portion of the proceeds of online sales donated to local schools through its Kavio! Shop & Support program.
Challenge
Inventory, Ordering and Accounting Processes Suffer with Outdated Business Systems
Lack of integration  among connected business processes is a tough obstacle to overcome when a company is striving to successfully manage its operations. Inefficiencies run rampant and there is a greater risk of inaccurate information due to manual, redundant data entry in disconnected systems. This is precisely the challenge that Kavio! faced before taking corrective action.
According to Kavio! COO, Lisa Tran, "Our staff resorted to a cumbersome copy-and-paste approach when entering data in one system and then re-entering that data in another. For example, since we couldn't open multiple windows at one time, we had to exit an invoice screen in order to open an inventory screen. Also, it was not unusual for the whole system to freeze, causing data corruption issues that caused downtime and required immediate attention. Reports were limited, leaving our management team with few tools to accurately analyze our business. Our numbers were in a constant state of flux and it took hours to reconcile data from the disconnected business systems."
Kavio!'s eCommerce program was slow and unreliable and there was very limited integration with their antiquated apparel software program. Customers attempting to place orders online faced hours-long waits to complete the process. "Knowing that our customers want the ability to place orders quickly, we knew the time had come to upgrade the online customer experience or risk losing them," said Tran. Inventory tracking was increasingly compromised by all the manual processes. Staff used a manual hand count of their inventory in the warehouse and then entered that number into an Excel spreadsheet. Plus, the system wasn't able to generate warnings or alerts to prevent against insufficient inventory to fill orders or customers exceeding their credit limits. (continued...)
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