Torque Wheels Shifts Into High Gear with Jitterbit EDI

Amber Wolff

Like EDI itself, ARR Enterprises got its start in the automotive industry about 40 years ago. Since then, it’s expanded to include brands like Atlanta Wheels and Accessories and OE Wheelworks — both of which work primarily with upfitters, selling their tires as part of packages and handling the installation.

But after seeing the decreasing quality of aftermarket wheels over the years, the company founded Torque Wheels to offer OE-quality wheels to end users through a network of tire retailers. Over the past two years, Torque Wheels has grown to include more than 50 employees and nine warehouses spread across the United States, and about $40M – $50M in yearly revenue.

Torque Wheels has been a Jitterbit EDI customer for more than a year, and we recently met with company CTO Alec Interrante to discuss their experience so far.

Starting Out

Like the other ARR companies, Alec said, Torque Wheels is built on customer service. “In everything we do, the customer comes first. We fix it, get it done, and take care of the customer — and if there’s something the company needs internally, that always comes second.”

And that went for EDI, too. The company had considered EDI before to streamline and simplify its processes. But as they looked into vendors, none seemed a good fit: The bigger solutions seemed outdated and seemed very expensive for what they offered, and the ERP they were using limited which EDI vendors they could connect with reliably.

But two things happened that brought EDI back to the fore. Torque Wheels switched from its previous ERP to NetSuite, which opened up a lot more EDI vendors for consideration. Then, the company entered negotiations with a very large new customer that insisted on EDI as part of the order process.

At that time, Alec and his small team worked directly with customers via phone or email to take orders and resolve issues. But messages were often hard to track and would get missed. Alec’s team was spending a lot of time “chasing data” and doing manual work as they shepherded orders through the process — keeping them from making progress on other necessary initiatives.

So Torque Wheels began looking for EDI vendors that could streamline internal processes while also improving the customer experience. The final decision, however, came down to customer service. “We started talking to several different EDI companies, and a big part of our choice came down to who was the most responsive, who answered our questions the fastest, and who was getting us the information we needed to make our decision,” Alec said. “With Jitterbit, it was like, ‘Let’s help make sure that things are going to work for you.’ We weren’t getting that level of responsiveness from anyone else we spoke with.”

Given Torque Wheels’ inexperience with EDI, and their need to get up and running as quickly as possible, Alec contacted Jitterbit Professional Services to assist with deployment. “With a customer this large, I decided it wasn’t a good idea for us to try and do it ourselves,” Alec said. “I wanted the peace of mind in knowing we’d be available and ready for them, without them having to wait on us to learn as we went.

“They just made it so much easier. I’m a developer at heart, so whatever we need to do, we could have done it, but sometimes that approach just isn’t viable,” he said.

Jitterbit Professional Services handled the communications directly with the trading partner. When it was time to exchange document specs, Alec said, “They sent us their document specs and asked for ours. We were able to respond with “Whatever you want,” and provide Jitterbit’s massive list of supported documents. It was amazing.”

Once Alec and his team received all the necessary information from the trading partner, it only took about a month for the EDI deployment to be fully operational. “We had one instance where we had to reach back out to the Jitterbit team,” Alec said. “We needed to set up email notifications for a particular case, and [Jitterbit Professional Services] basically said, ‘OK, done.’ It was very fast.”

Greater Simplicity

While Alec is following the best practice of maintaining and building out the documentation handed off by Jitterbit Professional Services, there’s been no need to use it so far. “I haven’t had to tell anyone how to do anything,” Alec said.

This sort of simplicity is important in a business where orders themselves are so often highly complex. Wheels are a lot more complicated than a lot of people realize, Alec explained — there are a lot of different sizes and fitments, depending on the vehicle, and often customers try to order something that won’t work for their vehicle … or something that doesn’t exist at all. “In the past, we’d have to find it and then reach out by phone, and the process could take several days,” Alec said.

His team does see some errors come through, but according to Alec, they’ve been a result of a customer having input something wrong. “The way it’s set up, it’s very easy to recover from those,” he explained. “It’s never a Jitterbit problem, and I think that’s important.”

Because the team receives error notifications instantly, it’s much faster than when they had to call and follow up, then wait for return phone calls. From start to finish, this would eat up at least an hour — and mistakes like this were in almost every order. Now Torque Wheels has instant visibility into orders and is able to make changes, then send an acknowledgement telling them what they should be ordering for their particular vehicle instead.

“Correcting errors and orders has been surprisingly effective. It’s working really well for us,” Alec said. “As they try to order things, we’re discovering more quickly if they don’t have something correct — I see the alerts come through, and it’s very fast.”

Increased Savings

This has been a huge time saver for Torque Wheels, which Alec says is great because they’re working with such a small team. “It’s just me and one other person on the tech side. There are a couple of sales and accounting team members who get involved at certain parts of the process, but as far as start to finish, it’s just the two of us,” Alec said.

He cites increased availability as a big benefit of their Jitterbit solution. “I can only do so much, and with EDI it’s a lot easier. This would be way too much for our small team to handle on our own without EDI.” The automation saves a ton of time on every side, allowing more time for Torque Wheels’ sales team to actually sell and for Alec’s team to tackle important issues such as compliance.

But while the time savings has been significant, there’s been financial savings as well: The hours Jitterbit EDI has freed up translates to money that can be spent on other things. And between missed shipments, ordering mistakes resulting in a customer receiving something they couldn’t use, incorrect info provided during the order process and more, Alec estimates that they’re also directly saving about $400 a week for a single customer. “When a wheel ships wrong, it’s expensive!” he said.

Better Ability to Grow

Setting up their biggest customer was huge for them. “But we’re growing really fast now,” Alec said. “We’ll probably have another five soon, because we’re onboarding very quickly with a lot of big ecommerce accounts.”

Torque Wheels is now preparing to sell to several ecommerce customers that are major players in their industry — companies significantly larger than Torque Wheels itself. “I have a backlog right now, and with these customers, we’ll be automating everything.”

He feels much more prepared to onboard these customers than he did when approached by his first EDI trading partner, because he knows it’ll be a quick process. The solution is already in place, and he can reference the first EDI customer as a template for future setups. Jitterbit has a long list of prebuilt trading partners, but even if new customers aren’t among them, adding them takes just minutes.

Recently, when another prospective partner asked about Torque Wheels’ EDI capabilities, Alec was again able to send the list of Jitterbit’s supported documents, and let them know they’d be well taken care of. “That looks very good for us,” Alec said. “There are huge upsides to using Jitterbit EDI because it makes it easier to manage those relationships.” Another benefit is that it manages them in ways that can be tracked, as opposed to when the team was struggling with trying to do everything manually.

“Honestly, I don’t have to do much, because it’s just been working,” Alec said. “Jitterbit is easy to get started and keep going.” Which is important, Alec said, because one of the most important things for Torque Wheels is reliability. “In everything we do, that’s always it. So far, there have been no issues at all!”