Duraflame Fires Up Growth With Help From Cleo Integration Cloud

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Duraflame consolidated four disparate legacy integration systems onto Cleo Integration Cloud (CIC) to manage high-volume seasonal demand spikes and strategic business acquisitions. By migrating 98% of B2B transactions to a single-platform solution, Duraflame eliminated its dependency on external consultants, reduced EDI issue resolution time by 90%, and successfully navigated a 40% increase in transaction volume during peak selling seasons.

KEY PERFORMANCE OUTCOMES

• Consolidation of Tech Debt: Successfully unified four fragmented solutions (Cleo LexiCom, IBM Gentran, SPS Commerce, and Edict Systems) into one cohesive cloud ecosystem, reducing hardware, software, and maintenance overhead.

• 90% Faster Issue Resolution: Drastically reduced time spent resolving EDI order processing issues, enabling the IT team to typically resolve customer issues within the same business day.

• Rapid Acquisition Integration: Enabled the strategic expansion into the charcoal market by migrating the acquired B&B Charcoal business ecosystem onto CIC in less than two weeks.

• Operational Autonomy: Eliminated reliance on external EDI consultants by leveraging CIC’s intuitive interface and Cleo’s blended support model, taking full internal control of integration strategy.

• Inventory & SLA Protection: Automated reference table updates to ensure accurate processing of purchase orders despite constant item-number changes, protecting inventory accuracy and meeting internal 24-hour SLAs.

INTRODUCTION

Since the invention of the first manufactured wood-wax firelog in 1968, Duraflame, Inc. has faithfully provided fast-lighting, cleaner burning fires to generations in North America and beyond. And over the past 50 years, the trusted duraflame® brand name has become synonymous with reliability, safety, and convenience. Duraflame has grown and today owns an impressive 70% market share of the manufactured firelog market in the US.

BUSINESS NEED

To better manage its business through seasonally driven demand spikes where key retail partners like Walmart, Costco, and others significantly increased orders for its popular manufactured firelog products, Duraflame needed to consolidate three disparate integration solutions onto a single-platform solution. The goal? Drive security, flexibility, and efficiency into their business operations. 

During their peak fall 2020 selling season, the company experienced a 40% increase in B2B transactions from big box stores and thousands of other, smaller retailers across North America. Fortunately, they were ready and able to handle this unprecedented spike in demand, thanks to Cleo’s scalable platform and integration support team.

IT CHALLENGES

For years, Duraflame had been using four different integration solutions -- Cleo LexiCom for AS2 connectivity and file transfers with large retailers; an on-premise deployment of IBM Gentran for EDI and data transformation; SPS Commerce to accommodate a few specialty retail customer requirements; and Edict Systems for a handful of partners that came through a previous company acquisition.

All of these systems were managed by an internal EDI team supported by external EDI consultants. The mix of technologies yielded limited visibility and no proactive control, added unnecessary hardware, software, maintenance, and staffing costs, but mostly was simply too rigid to accommodate trading partner updates or unforeseen demand spikes.

The company also struggled with timely and accurate processing of purchase orders and resolving issues within their desired 24-hour internal SLA. This directly impacted inventory accuracy, which led to delayed shipments of customer orders and potential losses in revenue. While Duraflame had a fantastic relationship with their ecosystem and superb business operations, it’s newly appointed Director of IT, John Hwee, saw a golden opportunity for streamlining and operational improvements.

THE SOLUTION

Upon doing some extensive research, evaluating their current vendors, and entertaining new ones, Duraflame selected Cleo, the global leader in ecosystem integration technology. The Cleo Integration Cloud (CIC) platform was seen as the industry’s only provider of ecosystem integration at scale, offering API and EDI integration delivered in the cloud, with flexibility of self-service or managed services, and end-to-end business process visibility across any transaction.

Having implemented and run Cleo LexiCom to transact business with one of their largest retail customers for over a decade, Hwee and his team had confidence in Cleo’s integration expertise and technical capabilities.

“The Cleo Integration Cloud platform is secure, easy to use, and highly flexible to meet our business requirements,” Hwee said. “Today, more than 98% of our B2B transactions are running through CIC, and we can see everything that’s going on. Cleo’s ecosystem integration platform and their unique blend of self-service and managed services, plus their team’s drive, commitment, and attention to detail, all made our migration easy and successful. We experienced zero problems or issues even though we implemented CIC during our peak business time, not to mention a pandemic.”

With CIC, Duraflame can process purchase orders and ship customer orders efficiently, quickly, and accurately, even as item numbers change constantly due to inventory constraints. 

Further, the platform’s ability to automate reference table updates means Duraflame saves hours of work by not having to manually fix EDI order processing issues, bringing far greater continuity into their critical business relationships. Furthermore, Duraflame was able to eliminate their dependency on external EDI consultants – reducing their costs and taking integration control back into their own hands. “We’ve greatly reduced our time spent resolving issues and it’s comforting to know our systems are being looked after 24 X 7 in the cloud, so that if something does come up, we know about it immediately. Now we can typically take care of any customer’s issue within the same business day,” Hwee explained. Duraflame’s products have continued to catch fire in the market, and CIC is also now supporting the company’s strategic expansion into the charcoal business. Duraflame recently acquired B&B Charcoal and consolidated that business ecosystem onto CIC – bringing two separate business streams together into a single system. As part of the acquisition integration, Cleo’s Managed Services team helped Hwee and his staff migrate six customers onto CIC in less than two weeks from the project start date. It’s no wonder so many retailers are fired up about doing more business with Duraflame.