High Volume Dear Starshipit integration

GrowthPath 

Dear-Starshipit Integration

 

Starshipit is an excellent cloud-based transport manager, for dispatching, manifesting and interacting with couriers and other transporters. We have clients who are very happy with the product, and with the support. GrowthPath rates Starshipit very highly.

The out of the box Dear integration has some deficiencies. It doesn't work with advanced orders (multiple fulfilments) and it struggles with high-volume sites (> 400 orders a day).

This performance problem is not a problem with Starshipit or Dear, just a problem with the integration.

GrowthPath has a much more sophisticated approach to Dear integrations, with logic and techniques that provide a much more powerful and higher performance integration.

GrowthPath will build custom-logic into the integration. Some examples of this are below. Our development is in-house.

 

Overview of the GrowthPath Starshipit Integration

  • Completely replaces the existing Starshipit Dear integration.
  • Can map Dear warehouse to specific Starshipit child accounts, to support multiple locations.
  • Other advanced routing logic can be built-in, to handle orders by channel, for instance.
  • Works with Advanced Orders. It sends fulfilments to Starshipit, not Dear orders, so multiple fulfilments are possible.
  • Will convert simple orders to advanced orders if necessary. 
  • Will optionally split a multi-location order into fulfilments by location.
  • Will optionally auto-pick orders based on stock. This includes handling the assembly of Auto-Assemble BOMs. This feature looks back a certain number of weeks, and therefore is an auto-filler of backorders when stock becomes available, a huge time saver for high-volume businesses.
  • Advanced order splitting logic, for click and collect, fulfilment of orders over multiple Starshipit child accounts if this is optimal, re-routing of orders to the nearest stock point (enabling retail locations to participate in filling online orders, particularly if they are close to the customer)
  • Can send either Picked or Packed fulfilments to SSI, depending on your workflow. 
  • Retrieves Starshipit orders after labels are printed, and completes the fulfilment in Dear (packing if necessary)
  • Retrieves Starshipit tracking details and updates Dear
  • Errors and exceptions are handled by email rather than a UI. Status messages and errors are written to an additional attribute on the Dear Sales Order header. The intention is to avoid yet another login. 
  • Optional server monitoring via a third-party alert if services fail.

 

This integration is hosted on a client-specific GrowthPath Application Server. Client-dedicated servers are much more secure, higher performance and allow you to take over the server subscription at any point for business continuity assurance.

 

Performance

This is a high-performance integration, capable of > 1000 orders a day. It uses locking and caching and other advanced features of the GrowthPath application server.

Some of these steps require updates of the GrowthPath Dear cache in order to perform well. Therefore, they run on batch jobs every 15 minutes. 

The GrowthPath Application Server will use multiple API connections if they are available. Multiple API connections are necessary for high-volume sites. 

Server Monitoring

The core background jobs are monitored and can be viewed by clients upon request. This is “deadman” monitoring: it alarms if a background process does not check-in on a certain schedule.

 

Pricing

This is a sophisticated solution for advanced customers. Usually, such businesses have opportunities for advanced logic in the integration.

To use the GrowthPath Dear-Starshipit integration, you will need to subscribe to the GrowthPath Application Server. Allow an annual fee of $2K AUD for this. You only need one subscription, regardless of how many Dear instances you have and how many GrowthPath integrations you have. If your data requirements or workload is especially high, you may need a more expensive server.

The Starshipit integration is not a subscription product. You pay a fixed price up-front fee. The price depends on the amount of custom logic you need. Allow between $6K and $20K AUD.