Previously, Evolve BioSystems was reliant on Shopify’s API connection to fulfill orders.  With more business lining up, they wanted an EDI solution to streamline efficiency, with the ability to integrate with their 3PL.  Evolve does not have an ERP solution, which is not standard when trying to implement EDI into a business.  B2BGateway needed to accommodate the differences between Evolve’s multiple Sales channels and route the information flowing in directly to their 3PL for fulfillment.

Evolve BioSystems requires a cold shipped product, so fulfillment can become complex.  Evolve ships live organisms with ice packs to hospitals across the country.  Because of the nature of this product, they need to ship Monday-Wednesday for two day shipments, Thursday shipments go overnight, and they will occasionally ship Friday for a Saturday delivery depending on cutoff times.  These deadlines are strict.

Any orders that are placed on Friday afternoon, all the way through Monday morning, would be shipped out that Monday afternoon.  Due to the complexity of this schedule, their fulfillment solution needs to distinguish the transits times as well as the cutoff times and ship accordingly.  Sometimes due to inclement weather scenarios such as a really hot day, they need to upgrade the shipping to overnight even if the order was placed for two day shipping.  The consumer actually never chooses a one or two day shipping method, however they are choosing the date for which they want the product delivered.  On top of these complexities, when an order is placed outside of their Shopify store or if they place a manual order, they can not utilize their 3PL’s algorithm because it can only tie into Shopify. The order only comes in as the title of the shipping method, for example, ‘Expedited’.

B2BGateway has created cross reference tables for Evolve that can translate “expedited” to the appropriate shipping method and shipping code.

Essentially, B2BGateway’s solution translates these “non-Shopify” orders and sends them to their 3PL with the appropriate shipping code, calculating which day of the week the order should be shipped and which day it should arrive.