Trucking Retailer Integrates Karmak, Salesforce and 25 Branches with Jitterbit

Challenge

From its beginnings in Minnesota, U.S., this truck sales company has expanded to over 20 locations across the Upper Midwest to become the region’s largest privately held dealer group.

As it grew, the company became increasingly frustrated with its ecommerce platform. They could make very few changes on their own: For example, even a simple font change on the site had to go through the entire estimate process and moved very slowly.

Unfortunately, all of the hours the platform allotted for changes — simple ones like this as well as critical operation changes — tended to be taken up by just updating the platform itself. Inventory and pricing changes had to be made manually, and erroneous “not in stock” statuses were common. If a part was actually out of stock — but was available at another location — there was no way to know, as the stores were not connected.

Understanding the vital role truckers play, the truck retailer strived to keep their operations running smoothly, but their former ecommerce platform had begun putting that at risk. After sales dropped by 50%, and its SEO team sounded the alarm about site performance and customer experience, the company began looking at other options.

Solution

The big challenge was finding vendors that had experience working with Karmak, a DMS solution for the heavy-duty trucking industry known for being complex and very difficult to integrate.

“Karmak is essential for accessing Peterbilt’s product and parts data, but it lacks connections to most ecommerce platforms,” the company’s Operations Analyst said. “The database we use to pull information out of Karmak has gone through 30 years with us, maybe longer, so connecting a good CRM system with it has proven incredibly difficult.”

They chose Shopify after finding it the most user-friendly ecommerce platform — and based on Shopify’s recommendations, chose Jitterbit because of its expertise and experience with Karmak.

Bumps in the Road

Due to a miscommunication, however, the company wasn’t assigned the team with Karmak experience. Instead, they got a team that had never worked with Karmak before.

Despite their inexperience, the team got the integration live fairly quickly. It worked great … for about a week. After their assigned team was unable to address the failed integration, the company then reached out to their Jitterbit project manager, who promised to make it right.

“Every time we’ve engaged Jitterbit for support, they’ve been great. They’ve been fantastic,” said the Director of Used Trucks and Marketing. “We didn’t think an integration with Karmak and Shopify would be possible. Jitterbit connected us, and their support team easily answered all our questions.”

Despite these bumps in the road, the entire process was completed in under three months, and the trucking retailer soon began reaping the benefits of its new system.

Results

Since deploying Jitterbit and Shopify, the company has seen a roughly 50% increase in overall revenue. The website is now much more comprehensive as well, with inventory increasing from 7,000 parts to 11,000. They’re now able to grow their online business, whereas before they were just trying to fix stuff.

The company’s dedication to the core principle that fueled their growth —– serving their customers —– remains paramount, and their new setup helps them accomplish this by allowing them to ship faster and adjust products in real time.

And with the Karmak integration up and running, this inventory stays up to date with the most current store availability. If a part is unavailable in one location, it can easily be shipped to another.

“Our Karmak and Shopify integration from Jitterbit provides clarity when we need to reorder inventory. Now that both systems share data, we’ve automated our inventory restock process and reallocate that time to more strategic initiatives,” the Operations Analyst explained.

This has also helped ensure that customers are always shown the most up-to-date pricing information. “Our pricing and inventory change monthly,” the company’s Director of Used Trucks and Marketing said. “If products were off, it would be devastating. Jitterbit’s integration has saved us time and solved a critical issue. It’s a lifesaver.”

The employee experience has been improved, as well. “Our backend user experience is much simpler now, especially when handling payments and refunds. Shopify can even minimize fraud by blocking suspicious orders.”

Overall, the trucking retailer says they appreciate everything Jitterbit empowers them to do on their own. “When we sit down to work on things, we have an understanding of what we’re working with. We’re very happy with where we’re at today.”