Perfect Snacks achieves ecommerce optimization through automation with Celigo

About

Founded by the Keith Family in 2005 with a family recipe they’d had as kids, Perfect Snacks’ is best known for its hero line, Perfect Bar®: The Original Refrigerated Protein Bar™. Today, the brand offers a portfolio of refrigerated snacks that offer a convenient and delicious dose of whole-food nutrition.

Made with whole-food ingredients, like freshly ground nut butter, organic honey, and 20+ superfoods, all Perfect Snacks products are Organic when possible, Gluten-Free, Non-GMO Project Verified, Low-GI, and Kosher.

You can find Perfect Snacks products — Perfect Bar® and Perfect Bar® Snack Size — in the refrigerated section of more than 35,000 fridges nationwide, including Whole Foods Market, Target, Costco, Starbucks, Walmart, Safeway, Kroger, Publix, and many more, as well as online at www.perfectsnacks.com.

Background

13 kids, a family bus, and a love of whole foods: The story of Perfect Snacks is a nutty one. It all started with our Dad, a self-proclaimed ‘health nut’ who was passionate about nutrition, and led our king-size family on cross-country adventures for an anything-is-possible type of childhood. When our Dad’s health took a turn, we banded together as siblings to support our family and risked it all on the unconventional idea of putting a protein bar in the fridge. Now, we’re all grown up, and we’ve been able to share our delicious, family recipe with the world.

And they were very successful, partnering with well-known brands like Costco, Target, Walmart, Kroger, and Starbucks, and bringing in large orders from consumers and retailers alike. However, their processes were struggling to keep pace with their rapidly-growing business. Many of their procedures, including those around billing and fulfillment, were heavily reliant on manual transactions and file uploads. As a result, the team had limited real-time insights into their inventory. When the company started to undergo several rapid shifts, the Perfect Snacks team decided it was time to upgrade and automate its operations.

The challenge

In 2019 and 2020, Perfect Snacks was in the midst of major transformation. For one, they had just consolidated inventory and accounting from two separate systems into NetSuite and brought on multiple new ecommerce warehouses. In addition, they had become a subsidiary of Mondelez International.

During this time, the company’s order volume was increasing, and their manual processes were no longer able to scale as quickly as needed. Prior to implementing the new systems, all order creation and fulfillment required large file uploads to multiple platforms and manual intervention to format correctly. Occasionally, these uploads were so large they would slow down system processing to the point that the productivity of other operations was affected.

The delays caused by manual processing meant that order status information was not posted in real-time. And, without current visibility of their inventory and orders, the Perfect Snacks team was unable to make data-based business decisions. Additionally, given the reliance on manual processes, the system was prone to human error.

At their most cumbersome, the company’s ecommerce procedures required dedicated headcount for invoicing and fulfillment-based tasks.

Once NetSuite was in place, the Perfect Snacks team decided that they needed to make the most of this new system, and that meant choosing an integration platform that would help them extract the maximum value from their investment. The company’s CFO evaluated several potential solutions, and Celigo came out on top.

“Celigo has significantly helped us to automate and optimize our ecommerce business. Without it, we would not be able to sustain the volume that we currently have.”

Business Systems Analysis Manager, Perfect Snacks

The solution

With Celigo now part of their tech stack, the Perfect Snacks team got to work recreating the processes they already had in place, but with integrations and automation through Celigo rather than manual file uploads. The Perfect Snacks team calls this Phase One, which was all about getting “baseline operational.” They quickly implemented several pre-built connections, including Amazon and Shopify integrations, and established a few custom ones as well with the help of a dedicated developer.

Phase Two involved expanding on their pre-built integrations and taking advantage of additional functionality. For example, the team activated pay-out reconciliation flows and explored new features, all the while increasing their overall knowledge of Celigo through real-world experience.

Currently, the company is in Phase Three: evaluating their remaining manual processes and finding ways to automate them with Celigo. At this point in time, Perfect Snacks is actively looking at where teams are still completing processes manually and where they see the largest needs for process improvement.

Bottom line

Since implementing Celigo, Perfect Snacks has been able to reach one of its highest-priority business objectives: bringing in more revenue through the ecommerce side of its operations. Celigo has significantly helped Perfect Snacks automate and optimize its ecommerce business. Without it, they report that they would not be able to sustain the current volume. Additionally, they have been able to put more emphasis on e-commerce as a company through very high-volume flash sales and promotions that the previous systems would not have been able to handle.

Moving from manual to automated processes involved a cultural change; through end-user training and process documentation, the company has been able to increase user adoption across multiple departments. While this cultural adjustment is ongoing, the Perfect Snacks team has seen greater reliance on and trust in Celigo and NetSuite.

Another benefit has been the significant reduction in time-consuming manual labor, which has freed up employees to spend their efforts on other, more strategic tasks. Perfect Snacks no longer had to complete as many manual order fulfillments and invoices, which allowed them to allocate resources elsewhere.

“Post-Celigo implementation, we have been able to systematically create, fulfill, and bill over 100K orders per year since 2020, which was about a 60% increase to our annual volume prior to having the automation features,”

Business Systems Analysis Manager, Perfect Snacks