A company doesn’t generate a valuation of over $100B without having a keen eye for innovation. And that’s exactly what propelled this US-based payments industry disruptor into a household name.

That, and their involvement with the small business community. This innovative FinTech company is both a pioneer and a leader in equipping sole proprietors, microbusinesses, and other small organizations with simple-to-use yet professional phone and countertop point-of-sale devices. They’ve grown exponentially since their launch, now shipping millions of devices per year globally.

But like the sector this FinTech disruptor serves, the company found themselves with a classic small business problem: They had outgrown their way of doing things.

Specifically, they needed to rethink their logistics and supply chain across two fronts.

The first key challenge was that the company’s supply chain team was essentially managing their network of suppliers, forwarders, warehouse operators, and outbound carriers with too many manual inputs. The use of spreadsheets, emails, and calls meant information was scattered or shared in individual conversations, making it nearly impossible to have a clear understanding of the status of orders, shipments, and deliveries, and perhaps most critically, whether therewere problems along the way.

Add to that the fact the company has a unique fulfillment model, offering many of their North American customers same-day delivery within a 24-hour window through several different carriers. This commitment to rapid delivery put a high amount of pressure on the company’s logistics to get things done right, and right on time, but with no way of measuring how well each of their carriers were fulfilling their obligations.

The second major challenge involved managing their inventory and keeping appropriate stock levels. When you’re shipping 2 million units per year, it’s easy to either underestimate or overestimate how much stock you need.

Yet for this FinTech company, they were practically flying blind; relying on blanket orders to their manufacturers and almost zero visibility between what the purchase order was for, what the manufacturing order stated, and what was actually delivered.

With all three pieces of vital information siloed, the company occasionally found themselves unclear about their overall inventory levels.

A secret to this FinTech disruptor’s approach has been working with like-minded companies to continually streamline their operations, reduce costs, improve customer service, and take advantage of technology that can help them accomplish all of the above. Enter Orkestra, a fellow innovator of supply chains and logistics.

Orkestra swiftly handled both of the company’s primary challenges related to too many manual and opaque supply chain processes and activities, in large part through the implementation of a supply chain management platform.

The supply chain management platform helped centralize all relevant information that was previously held in emails, on personal computers, in tucked-away server files, and in the heads of their employees and partners. For the first time, anyone within the company could simply glance at their Orkestra dashboard and get a clear picture of the different steps in the supply chain and logistics operations.

The second major challenge, regarding siloed information between purchase orders, manufacturing, and delivery, was also remedied through the deployment of Orkestra’s execution modules that effectively manages purchase orders and optimizes shipment execution.

The supply chain team now submits manufacturer orders directly through the platform. The manufacturer also uses the platform to plan the order, schedule, and book shipments, and then pass that information onto carriers.

This final step of the puzzle is essential in helping keep the FinTech company’s distribution network so efficient. Orkestra is a carrier-agnostic platform, meaning all bookings can be handled from within the platform regardless of carrier or destination. This has allowed the company to standardize the fulfillment process, providing line of sight down to the individual shipment and SKU level, ultimately giving the company better control of information across multiple carriers, including measuring their performance.

This synchronization allows anyone at the company to easily connect the dots between orders, manufacturing, and deliveries, essentially eliminating any sense of confusion they used to have with perceived shortages.