Web Stores Department

High Level Activities / Processing

1. Set up and configure customer webstores in house including connectivity details and service parameters per SLA
2. Hold in house client webstore off the shelf inventory items
3. Parallel webstore stock items and inventory - reconcile as necessary
4. Consume and fulfil (Off the shelf and POD) orders placed on customer webstores
5. For On Demand orders, source the required garments and decorate per order
6. Interface with delivery services to despatch orders per webstore shipping address.

Inputs

Outputs

See here for a schematic of high level overview

Current Processing Flow

Sign Up of TOT as the Webstore Fulfilment Agent

TOT and Customer seek to enter a Business arrangement where the Customer owns a webstore hosted on the shopify platform and wishes TOT to provide the store manufacture and/or Fulfilment services.

TOT and the Web store owner discuss and agree Terms of Business and formalise this by signing Service Level Agreement

Set up and Configure  Internal <--> Shopify Webstore Connectivity

Shopify Platform

1. Connectivity to TOT's system is created in shopify via adding a Private App in the development module
2. Within the private app definition, all pertinent access rights should be set to the maximum privileges
3. Creating a Private App will generate an API Key and Password.
4. API key and Password need to be copied / harvested for usage within TOT's systems

TOT Systems

1. A representation of the shopify webstore is created "TOT webstore record" within its owner company's customer record.

Note a single customer record can have several webstore records.

2. The TOT webstore record is populated with the key linkage attributes: shopify webstore name; API Key & password to establish connectivity between the two platforms
3. Once connectivity has been created, TOT's platform passes a Strokeone Fulfilment Service configuration key to Shopify.
4. Pricing Matrices (Product, Garment and Fulfilment) are associated to the TOT web store record, per the  SLA / Terms and Conditions agreed between the two parties. . If suitable prices matrices do not exist, they are created to suit
5. These pricing matrices will be used to apply the correct costs to consumed webstore orders.

See here for schematic of the sign up / configuration workflow

Create, Synchronise and Reconcile Products

Creation

Shopify Platform

1. Ensure Products that will be manufactured and/or fulfilled by TOT are created / populated with an inventory definition of Strokeone Fulfilment Service and a Status of Live

TOT Systems

1. Equivalent products to the shopify webstore products are required to be created and linked in the TOT systems.

2. Equivalent products are typically semi automatically inserted via an import process.

3. When imported in this way, the necessary linkage attributes between the two platforms are automatically created.

   • Shopify Product Variant identifier.

   • Shopify Store Name.

4. Further product embellishment is applied to the Product in TOT's platforms.

   • Brand / Type / Style / Colour / Size / Description / Category
     

5. If the product is a Print on Demand (POD) item then additional information is needed to be recorded in order that TOT can correctly manufacture (print) the product.

   • The input (blank) product that the print will be applied to.

   • A design record to hold the product image (and associated decoration information) that will be printed.
     

6. For all webstore products created in TOT platforms a unique product identification barcode is generated and attached to the physical products.
   

7. For Off the Shelf OTS)  products, it is likely that as part of the on boarding process, the webstore owner delivers the products to TOT's warehouse

8. In this instance, aside from setting up the products, webstore staff will book these into stock via the following steps

   • Create a Purchase Order for the OTS goods received  - marking as owner company = webstore company

   • PO Lines = the products / quantity received

   • Book the received items into stock and locate

See here for schematic of new product setup for OTS and POD items

Synchronise and Reconcile

1. Manual Tooling exists to download the shopify products configured to be fulfilled with TOT and query the TOT system to identify linked equivalents
2. Webstore staff can use this tooling to identify products that are missing (or potentially not linked) in the TOT platform
3. In terms of quantity reconciliations, TOT staff can push quantity information to the shopify platform and/or adjust qty data within TOT platforms as necessary
   

Create Production Ready Art Work

1. POD products have an artwork requirement. That is, in order to manufacture (print) the image to high quality commercially acceptable standards, TOT requires high resolution artwork which can then be processed for consumption by the DTG print machines
2. High quality artwork is therefore sought and obtained from the webstore owner for each unique POD design
3. Once the Artwork is obtained, it is recorded against the Design Identifier record which is then related to the underlying product via the Design Group identifier. (The rationale for the design ID to Group mapping is to facilitate same design being employed across numerous groups to support differing print options)
4. Once Artwork has been received and stored in the Design ID record, the Art department can process this Artwork as per any new artwork requirement

Consume Webstore Orders

1. TOT Platforms run an import process for each Webstore that TOT Manages which are marked as Active
2. This process is scheduled to run overnight
3. The process does the following per webstore
   • Downloads all orders that are in an unfulfilled status
   • Determines whether the products on the orders have a fulfilment service of Strokeone Fulfilment service
   • Creates a single Job Order placeholder in TOT's system
   • For those webstore orders for POD products, create the necessary process lines, garment requirements and despatch requirement records. Account for the quantity ordered
   • For those webstore orders for OTS products, create a despatch requirement record for the ordered products
4. Under this model, per webstore, a single job order is created to represent all the shopify store customer orders; and individual despatch orders are created per customer order.

Process & Fulfil Webstore Orders : Off the Shelf Orders

Organise Workload

1. Webstore staff organise their workload by interrogating and denoting which orders are OTS, POD or a combination
2. Having Organised a list of OTS orders, staff print out a list of Jobs with their associated barcodes
3. Using a tablet, users then scan each of the barcodes for the jobs they will be picking, select a picking trolley and scan the identifier for the picking trolley
4. The tablet now contains a fully loaded list of jobs and because all OTS items have been booked in, their underlying storage locations

Visit Storage Locations and Retrieve required Goods

1. As the locations of the required goods is known, The tablet generates an optimum route for the user to take to retrieve the required goods
2. The tablet directs the user to visit a location and retrieve item(s) from the location
3. As staff reach the directed location, they scan the barcode of the required OTS good to effect a pick action
4. The tablet will then direct the user to the location of the next required item
5. This process is repeated until all items required to be picked for the set of OTS orders have been retrieved
6. Staff then return the picking trolley to a picking station of the next part of the process

See here for Schematic

Generate Delivery Notes

1. Staff select a picking trolley, staff scan each job barcode for the items in the picking container
2. This produces a list / group of jobs that should correspond to the jobs in the picking container
3. Staff interrogate the list of associated orders to ensure that they have all required shipping information recorded (courier, service code, packing type)
4. Staff then initiate an API call for each order to the underlying courier service to obtain shipping references and prepaid label info (and also pay for the shipping)
5. Staff then print off the delivery notes for each order
6. The delivery note contains two main sections of information

• • The Shipping Information (recipient address, courier, courier service, prepayment barcode, reference stamp

  • Order Contents  - product reference, description, quantity, TOT order barcode
    

7. For each delivery note, webstore staff scan the order barcode, place the delivery note in a Picking Pod, and scan the location barcode of the Pod.

8. This process is repeated until all delivery notes have been placed into Picking Pods

Marrying Retrieved goods to Delivery Notes in Pods

1. Staff physically select a picking container, and scan it's barcode to bring into focus the items within it

2. Staff then select an item, and scan its barcode - this invokes a notification to place the item into the corresponding Picked POD that contains the corresponding delivery note

3. Staff physically place the item into the picking pod and confirm this by scanning the picking pod location. This accounts for the item as picked.

4. This process is repeated until all the items in the picking container have been married up with their corresponding delivery notes in the picking PODS

5. At the end of this process, items in the picking PODs should be ready for packaging

Packaging & Despatching Goods

1. Staff visit the fully picked pods which contain the physical goods and their associated delivery note
2. Staff interrogate the order to ascertain the packaging material needed for the order (parcel, letter, etc.)
3. Staff package the order and separate the delivery note into its two parts
   • The order contents is placed within the packaged order
   • The shipping label is attached to the outside of the packaged order
4. The order record is updated as sent in the internal application- - this causes messaging to shopify to update the shopify order as sent and applies the courier shipping reference
5. Staff physically place the packaged order into the respective courier's collection area/container

See here for schematic

Process & Fulfil Webstore Orders : Print on Demand Orders

Note: Before garments are printed on demand, a unique SKU barcode label is generated and applied to the front of the garment

The barcode holds the following information: -

• Order number - including customer; delivery address etc
• SKU detail- item type, colour, size, decoration etc

Processing steps

1. Print on Demand garments are printed via the DTG team.

2. Once garments have been printed, they are booked into a printed location (typically a trolley) by the DTG area and physically moved to the webstore department.

3. Therefore, the internal system has a record of the printed SKU's and their associated physical location

4. Staff open the internal system webstores module and then with a scan-gun, scan the location barcode of the trolley that contains the POD garments.
   (This notifies the internal system the contents of that specific location are in focus for processing)

5. Staff then physically select a decorated item within the trolley and scan its SKU barcode

6. This invokes the internal system to undertake the following activities:-

• Print out a delivery note

• Pick the SKU, i.e. debit the available quantity from the inventory

• Remove the item from the current storage location

• Marks the order as sent - and sends notification of this to shopify

7. If the order is already part picked - i.e., it contains other items that have already been picked, staff are system prompted of the part picked pod that contains the other item(s) - so that they can retrieve them.

8. The order is then packaged according to the packing method denoted on the order record.

9. Staff then physically separate the delivery note into two sections:

   • The section containing the order contents goes inside the packaging along with the items;
     

   • the section which contains the recipients address information as well as postage payment information is affixed to the outside of the packaging.

10. Staff then physically place the packaged order  in the correct postal collecting bags.
    

11. At the time of writing this documentation, TOT overwhelmingly uses Royal Mail as the delivery service and has three collecting bags, separated out as follows: -

1. • • Untracked
     • Domestic Tracked
     • International Tracked
       

12. Repeat steps 4) to 10) until all garments in the trolley have been processed.

See here for a schematic of the workflow