The Challenge

Automating sluggish supply chain processes

David Greenfeld, CEO at Dream Pops, had a problem most CPG startups dream of having.

The company was seeing explosive growth—but as business boomed, the manual processes they’d used to manage daily operations were rapidly becoming unsustainable.

Dream Pops didn’t have a centralized hub to manage operations and hadn’t yet set up EDI connections with key customers.

That meant David and his small team were forced to frantically trawl through emails to find incoming orders from retailers, manually adjust inventory using cobbled-together spreadsheets, and then process and ship those orders from two completely different systems.

It was chaos.

The more they sold, the more overwhelming and time-consuming the process became. And as the company switched from a fully vertical supply chain to a more horizontal integration, the need to refine backend processes became all the more urgent.

David needed a way to automate his sales orders, inventory, and purchases that wouldn’t take months to implement or heavy-handed consulting hours to align with his unique supply chain.

As a time-starved CEO, he also wanted a partner who could guide him through that process—and continue to be there for his business, any time he needed them.

“We were running a lot of things manually—even to the point of writing out checks and invoices and mailing them. Our processes were a big time suck and caused a lot of frustration.”

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The Solution

Unlimited personalized support and a platform that’s tailored to their unique needs

When David connected with Unioncrate, he was encouraged to learn the company was built by CPG veterans who had faced the same challenges. Even better, they charged no onboarding costs and were committed to treating his business like part of the family.

In just weeks, Unioncrate’s team helped David digitize and formalize his entire operations—from setting up EDI connections and migrating his data to integrating with his existing platforms.

Best of all, it happened without any disruption to his business.

Unioncrate’s team also worked proactively to guide David through the platform’s easy-to-use functions and ensure he could manage things on his own.

In a very short time, David was able to confidently...

• Manage operations from one platform instead of bouncing between portals and digging through emails
• Get a clear picture of stock levels in realtime from a single source, saving them from making endless calls to suppliers to get inventory numbers
• Track the status of every sales order, purchase order, and item across multiple locations without playing even more phone tag with suppliers
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Throughout everything, Unioncrate’s team remained on-hand to ensure he was getting the best experience from the software—and return on his investment.

David hugely appreciated the unexpected amount of hands-on support he received at no added cost, long after the ‘sale’ was over.

“Unioncrate’s team has been available at the drop of a hat to help me and my team understand how the software works and to walk us through everything. They put in painstaking hours to make sure we really ‘get’ it.”

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The Result

Massive time savings and cost reductions

Since Dream Pops hired Unioncrate, they’ve dramatically reduced the time and cost required for operations management.

Having EDI connections alone saves David and his team over 10 hours of paperwork a week. They save a further 10 hours each week by automating their sales—and yet another 10 hours a week by automating their inventory.

Those 30 recovered hours are a seriously big deal for David and his small team, adding up to 180+ workdays a year where they’re not tangled up in spreadsheets and can focus on other priorities instead.

Because the platform simplifies their daily operations down to a few clicks, it has enabled the business to be incredibly lean and efficient. They can do so much more, without having to increase the size of their team—which David estimates saves his business up to $110,000 a year in administrative overheads.

With total visibility across his whole supply chain, David finally has clarity into exactly what to order, is prepared for spikes in demand, and has the data at his fingertips to optimize his inventory levels, fulfillment, and operational costs.

Finally, because Unioncrate has replaced manual, time-sucking tasks with instantaneous automation, David is able to scale and serve more customers.

At every step, David takes comfort in knowing he has a team behind him that will jump into action to help whenever called upon—giving him extra confidence as he continues to scale.