How Arcane Tinmen's distributors worldwide can restock across several locations themselves

Introduction

Who is Arcane Tinmen?

Arcane Tinmen is a Danish B2B company that sells gaming accessories to distributors all over the world. They are probably best known for Dragon Shield, which are plastic sleeves for card games such as Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon The Trading Card Game.

So it is Arcane Tinmen’s products that protect the sometimes rather valuable cards from greasy fingers and bent corners.

Read more about the company at arcanetinmen.com.

Distributors across the globe

With distributors in most countries worldwide – often with many locations – and a constantly evolving product range, Arcane Tinmen spent a lot of time communicating with the distributors about:

• Stock levels
• Order status
• Deliveries

If only there were a way for the distributors to find the information they needed themselves in a customer portal integrated with the ERP, so that both parties could save time and resources.

Fortunately, that is something we can help with.

What was the challenge?

No integration between Dynamics NAV and a B2B customer portal

The distributors could not order items, see an overview of which products were in stock, or see how far along their (often many) orders were, without contacting Arcane Tinmen, because there was no customer portal that could talk to their ERP at the time, Dynamics NAV – read more about our integration to Dynamics NAV.

That meant Arcane Tinmen’s back office had to answer a lot of questions from the distributors, and that the distributors found it hard to get an overview of orders, deliveries and stock levels. Not exactly ideal.

Awkward for global distributors to order to several locations

Arcane Tinmen’s customers include nationwide distributors in large geographical areas such as the USA, the EU, the Middle East and Asia. That means each individual distributor may well have several different locations from which they pass products on to retail.

But without an integration between a B2B customer portal and the ERP, it was awkward for the distributors to order items to a specific location while having the invoice sent to head office.

Read more about NAV webshop.

Both the distributors and Arcane Tinmen therefore missed an easier way to distribute information. And this is where good integrations come into the picture.

What was the result?

The 3 most important changes

• The distributors can now restock quickly across 100+ order lines at several locations
• Distributors can now purchase items that are automatically assigned the right status
• Thanks to the integration, the back office no longer gets questions about delivery or previous orders

Integration between the B2B portal and the ERP

With an integration between the B2B portal and Dynamics NAV, the distributors could now restock 100+ order lines across different locations in a few clicks. The integration also made it possible for the distributors to order to specific locations, but send the invoice to head office.

That means, for example, that a local branch in California belonging to a nationwide distributor in the USA could place an order for delivery in California, while the invoice was automatically sent to head office.

Integration moved from Dynamics NAV to 365 Business Central

Later in the process, Arcane Tinmen migrated from Dynamics NAV to the newer 365 Business Central with help from Skanderby A/S. Without losing the integrations Connectify had already built.

Connectify consists of a range of endpoints and data sources for the CMS, which means that we could “swap out” the endpoints connected to Dynamics NAV with 365 Business Central. In concrete terms, that meant Arcane Tinmen did not have to start over or make major changes to their B2B portal just because they had a natural need to update their CMS.

Read on about B2B webshop for Business Central.

Automatic assignment of item status

It was important to Arcane Tinmen that the distributors could easily see what stock status an item had at any given time. Connectify therefore made sure that items being purchased were automatically assigned one of the following statuses:

• The product can be delivered
• The product is placed on backorder
• The product will be delivered when it is back in stock
• The product is a preorder – that is, an upcoming new product

At the same time, the distributors could easily check where their often numerous orders were on their journey. That way they always had a complete overview of their orders. Fully automatically.

3 months after the integration, 95% of all orders came through the B2B portal

At times, Arcane Tinmen’s back office was busy answering questions from the distributors, because they could not find the answers themselves. But after the integration between the B2B customer portal and the ERP, they were spared a long list of questions from the distributors.

In concrete terms, after one month with Connectify’s integration Arcane Tinmen saw 37 per cent of orders come through the B2B portal. After two months it was 85 per cent of orders. And after three months, a full 95 per cent of all orders came through the portal.

Which has saved Arcane Tinmen a lot of time. And, most importantly, given the distributors a much smoother experience when ordering items.

Clearly a win-win situation!

Interested in reading more about B2B?

Here you will find our articles about systems that can support your B2B sales:

• 7 important digital solutions for your B2B sales in 2024
• What are the 3 biggest challenges in B2B sales in 2024?

How we helped Arcane Tinmen in 4 steps

We carried out a thorough analysis

We looked at the systems they use today and compared them with the needs they have right now. Companies often have systems and integrations that were good for them 2 years ago, but are now outdated.

Either because the technology has moved on, or because the company’s needs have changed. Often it is both.

We found the biggest errors and opportunities

In our analysis we identified the biggest errors and opportunities. These may be security issues or errors in the way the systems are supposed to talk to each other.

We also find the biggest opportunities to improve the company’s workflow, so they can save time and resources.

We presented our proposed solution

We then present our proposal for possible changes. We know that you know your business better than we do, so we listen to your input in order to arrive at exactly the right solution for you.

Because no two B2B companies are the same.

We built the best solutions – and tested them thoroughly

Finally, we developed and implemented the tailored solutions and tested them thoroughly, so they were ready to slot straight into the working day and the workflows at Arcane Tinmen.

And we make sure that everything works together.

Who did we work with?

We cannot do it all on our own. So we built this solution together with Skanderby A/S, who handled the migration to 365 Business Central.