Integrated Fishbowl Solution Makes Intricate Inventory Control Seem Like Child’s Play for Multi-Location, Custom Playset Manufacturer Backyard Adventures
Customer Company Size
Mid-size Company
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- Fishbowl Manufacturing
- QuickBooks Enterprise
Tech Stack
- Inventory Management Software
- Accounting Software
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Productivity Improvements
- Cost Savings
Technology Category
- Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)
- Functional Applications - Inventory Management Systems
Applicable Functions
- Discrete Manufacturing
- Sales & Marketing
Use Cases
- Inventory Management
- Supply Chain Visibility
Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
Backyard Adventures is a company based in Amarillo, Texas, that specializes in allowing its customers to design customized playsets for their children. The company offers a wide range of design options, making it a popular choice for parents and children with imagination. Backyard Adventures operates through a nationwide network of 65 distributors, making it a significant player in the industry. The company's unique business model, which involves a high degree of customization and a large number of product configurations, presents unique challenges in terms of inventory management and order entry. The company's distributors also use QuickBooks® accounting software, necessitating a solution that can integrate with this system.
The Challenge
Backyard Adventures, a Texas-based company that allows customers to design customized playsets for their children, faced a significant challenge in managing its inventory due to the large number of product configurations and parts to track. The company also needed to create custom work orders and standardize incoming product orders from its nationwide network of 65 distributors. The distributors required the new inventory solution to integrate with their QuickBooks® accounting software. Both Backyard Adventures and its distributors needed an accurate picture of inventory levels. Some distributors also needed to manage and track the parts inventories of multiple locations, and Backyard Adventures wanted a standardized way for dealers to place orders when their inventories ran low.
The Solution
Backyard Adventures turned to Fishbowl because of its powerful QuickBooks integration and advanced client/server architecture, which allows quick communications with remote users. Fishbowl’s sales order module lets Backyard Adventures’ customer pick the basic playset they want and then displays the custom options for that system in a list. As custom options are chosen, the list is updated with additional features and prices until the playset is complete. A work order is then automatically generated and the custom playset assembled. To streamline the reordering process, Fishbowl designed a reorder system that allows the user to set multiple “reorder” and “order-up-to” points in different units of measure and with the appropriate cost for that unit of measure. This option lets dealers see the substantial savings they realize in both time and money by ordering by the pallet load instead of by individual piece.
Operational Impact
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