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Customer stories

Eco style corp logoEco Style Corp LLC

Personal care product manufacturer dramatically improves cost efficiency and EDI data accuracy with OpenText™ Business Network Cloud

Eco style corp logo

About ECO STYLE

ECO STYLE, also known as ESTYLE Corp., LLC, is a personal care product manufacturer specializing in hair care products, including the popular ECO STYLE line of styling gels.
A women styling her hair
  • Founded:
    1983
  • Employees:
    100
  • Headquarters:
    Florida, USA

Summary

Challenges

  • Urgent need for EDI 856 compliance.
  • Lack of effective integration with Oracle NetSuite.
  • Failed transactions were disrupting invoicing, increasing costs, and impacting revenue.

Solutions

  • Partnered in the true sense: Expertise beyond compliance.
  • Streamlined implementation and partner onboarding.
  • Unlocked data insights for smarter decision-making.

Results

  • Reduced errors and provided full 856 EDI compliance
  • Accelerated partner onboarding with full flexibility
  • Ensured data accuracy and cost efficiency

Challenges

  • Urgent need for EDI 856 (advance shipment notice) compliance made this a critical requirement to avoid supply chain disruptions and lost business
  • Mandate to improve efficiency and prevent failed transactions from disrupting invoicing, increasing costs, and impacting revenue

ECO STYLE (Estyle) has operated successfully for over 40 years and stands out as a beacon of innovation, sustainability, and quality in the beauty industry. In an ever-changing dynamic category, ECO STYLE innovates based on genuine consumer needs, ensuring its formulas are effective and timeless.

Understanding that environmentally safe products are a key concern for today’s consumers, ECO STYLE makes sustainability a thread that runs through its total operation, from its hybrid work environment and the focus on optimized shipping approaches, to its eco-friendly ingredients and formulas, and the recycling programs embedded in its manufacturing processes.

While innovation and sustainability drive ECO STYLE’s success, operational efficiency is just as critical. Managing stock and supply chains efficiently requires a robust electronic data interchange (EDI) system that can handle evolving trading partner requirements and changing market conditions. As ECO STYLE looks to expand globally, they understand getting EDI right is critical to their success.

EDI plays a vital role in how ECO STYLE works with retailers of all sizes to manage order processes, but strict formatting rules make it difficult to adapt to different retailers and international markets. Even within the same retailer (e.g., Walmart), EDI requirements vary between regions, creating complexity.

As Tony Baldwin, Chief Technology Officer at ECO STYLE, explained, “Our previous EDI solution, SPS Commerce, was too rigid to accommodate these variations. Many of our customers don’t use standardized GTIN codes but instead work with internal item codes. Mapping these unique codes to EDI standards was extremely complex and not well-supported by SPS. We use Oracle NetSuite as our corporate ERP solution, but because SPS lacked effective integration capabilities, manual intervention was often required to enter, correct, and validate order data.”

This lack of automation created inefficiencies that impacted both costs and revenue for ECO STYLE. A dedicated IT team had to check for errors every night because EDI transactions frequently failed. This manual process not only increased internal costs and tied up internal IT resources, but also directly impacted revenue, as failed transactions prevented timely order processing and invoicing.

Furthermore, ECO STYLE needed its EDI solution to provide structured support for 856 EDI documents, or advance shipment notices (ASNs). These documents tell retailers exactly what is in a shipment before it arrives, leveraging barcode labelling and automation. Major partners, including Walgreens, Walmart, and CVS, require an 856, and in the short term, shipments would be refused without it.

Without a reliable EDI solution that could manage 856 compliance, ECO STYLE risked supply chain disruptions, penalties, and potential loss of key customers. With these challenges mounting, ECO STYLE sought out an EDI solution that was flexible, automated, and scalable. Baldwin turned to implementation partner Codinix Technologies to explore the best path forward.

cosmetic manufacturing

With OpenText, our software license and supports costs are 50 percent lower than alternative solutions we evaluated. And, more importantly, we have drastically reduced our manual effort and finally have the visibility we need to optimize and expand our business.

Tony Baldwin
Chief Technology Officer, Eco Style Corp LLC, USA

Solutions

OpenText™ Business Network Cloud gave ECO STYLE seamless NetSuite EDI integration, faster partner onboarding, and scalable EDI mapping. With enhanced reporting and data insights, ECO STYLE can optimize logistics and reduce costs in a competitive market.

Products deployed

Partnering in the true sense: Expertise beyond compliance

Codinix Technologies recommended OpenText Business Network Cloud, and when Baldwin compared it with other solutions, he was impressed for several key reasons. As he explained, “Our biggest challenge was lack of integration, and this is where OpenText shone for us. When we integrated it with our (Oracle) NetSuite implementation, it felt completely native to us. OpenText also demonstrated a very deep understanding of EDI compliance and standards, including how these may evolve in the short to medium term. This, for us, set OpenText apart from other providers who only focused on meeting current needs, where OpenText anticipated upcoming shifts in EDI standards.”

Beyond seamless integration, OpenText provided a flexible and scalable solution, designed to manage complex EDI mappings. According to Baldwin, OpenText was one of the only providers that could map ECO STYLE’s unique item codes to standard EDI formats, ensuring a smoother and more efficient integration process.

Streamlining implementation and partner onboarding

Codinix Technologies worked closely with OpenText experts on the project. The testing and implementation process took just under three weeks, thanks to the pre-built EDI document templates and mapping standards that come standard with OpenText Business Network Cloud. This reduces the need for customization and ensures faster implementation.

Baldwin commented, “We found that many of our retail and trading partners were already familiar with OpenText and knew what to expect from the EDI capabilities. As OpenText natively integrates with most ERP and EDI solutions in use by our partners, the onboarding process was very efficient.”

Smaller ECO STYLE partners often do not have full EDI capabilities, but OpenText bridges this gap by offering a user-friendly interface that allows non-EDI customers to manually input data so that transactions are still processed as standard EDI orders on ECO STYLE’s side.

Unlocking data insights for smarter decision-making

The limited reporting capabilities of their previous vendor, SPS Commerce, left ECO STYLE without the necessary EDI insights to understand the true cost of sales and order fulfillment. OpenText Business Network Cloud provides APIs and data extraction capabilities that can feed directly into ECO STYLE’s data warehouse.

Although the reporting features are not fully exploited yet, Baldwin is clear on the potential this offers. “Once fully integrated, the OpenText reporting capabilities can help us track and optimize our EDI performance,” he said. “This has huge potential for improving our logistics and carrier analysis. We will be able to streamline our decision-making process and control our costs much better. This level of transparency is critical in a retail environment with tight margins.”

A businessman using futuristic hologram computer

Testing and onboarding new retail partners with OpenText Business Network Cloud is faster than with any other EDI solution I have worked with in the last 20 years. The scalability and flexibility of the solution are particularly valuable for our expansion plans.

Tony Baldwin
Chief Technology Officer, Eco Style Corp LLC, USA

Results

ECO STYLE significantly reduced EDI errors, accelerated partner onboarding, and enhanced operational efficiency. Data accuracy and automation have cut manual effort, while software license and support costs are 50% lower compared to market alternatives.

Reduced errors and provided full 856 EDI compliance

Once OpenText Business Network Cloud is fully deployed, ECO STYLE expects EDI transaction errors to be the exception rather than the rule as it was with other vendors. The team tasked with managing EDI errors overnight can now be redeployed to other priorities that benefit the business and customers.

By introducing effective support for 856 EDI documents, customers no longer need to manually check shipments, enhancing efficiency in distribution centers and drastically improving processing time.

“The 856 support provided by OpenText wasn’t just a nice-to-have for us,” Baldwin noted. “It was business-critical so that we could continue working with our strategic retail partners.”

Accelerated partner onboarding with full flexibility

Retail partner onboarding used to be a time-consuming and complex process that could take weeks, if not months. Thanks to OpenText’s advanced integration capabilities and the pre-built EDI document templates, this is no longer an issue. As Baldwin commented, “Testing and onboarding new retail partners with OpenText Business Network Cloud is faster than with any other EDI solution I have worked with in the last 20 years. The scalability and flexibility of the solution are particularly valuable for our expansion plans. This allows us to serve a broad range of partners, from those with established EDI and ERP solutions that we can seamlessly integrate with, to smaller customers without a sophisticated EDI set-up.”

The introduction of OpenText Business Network Cloud has reduced IT complexity and workload, and substantially increased efficiency.

Ensured data accuracy and cost efficiency

Data accuracy at every level of the EDI process can make the difference between a successful EDI transaction and a failed one. ECO STYLE manages a high volume of transactions, with each of its 100 SKUs (Stock Keeping Units) having multiple variants which increases complexity exponentially. Unlike the previous solution, OpenText Business Network Cloud provides the flexibility and precision needed to account for item codes, geography, and customer-specific requirements—all within a rigid compliance framework.

Baldwin recounted, “EDI was a blind spot for us. We were spending a third of our IT budget on it and still needed a team checking EDI errors every night. With OpenText, our software license and supports costs are 50 percent lower than alternative solutions we evaluated. And, more importantly, we have drastically reduced our manual effort and finally have the visibility we need to optimize and expand our business."

He concluded, “A key factor in our successful implementation was the excellent support provided by OpenText. I have never even had to look at our SLAs because as soon as we have a query, our OpenText contacts are on the phone to us that same day. In an environment where every transaction equals revenue, that kind of responsiveness means everything.”

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