Seal Shield is a leading manufacturer of industrial-grade hygenic technology. Hospitals, governments, and educational & research institutions trust Seal Shield to provide keyboards, mice, and screens able to withstand the most stringent cleaning protocols, along with ultraviolet cleaning machines. With health and safety at stake, the only thing as important as the quality of Seal Shield’s products is the ability to reliably get them into customers’ facilities.
With a healthy growth rate averaging around 15% year-over-year, Seal Shield reached a point around 2012 where a true ERP was needed, and the company has been on NetSuite ever since. Fast-forward a decade, and Seal Shield has reached another inflection point, requiring dedicated shipping software, for which it selected Pacejet.
In 2019 Seal Shield made a strategic decision to relocate its operation and warehouse function from the west coast to a third-party logistics (3PL) warehouse on the east coast, which went live in February 2020. This was immediately before the COVID-19 pandemic, which triggered unanticipated growth in demand the very next month. During 2020, the company’s business doubled. However, a year later, it was clear that this arrangement had become a source of uncertainty, rather than an answer to it.
Outsourcing was supposed to increase efficiency and help the team prepare for that which they could not predict. Instead, the team found itself spending significant time developing processes and managing training of its outsourcing partner; an arrangement designed to create efficiencies consequently had the opposite effect. As Seal Shield began to address the pressures that came with a rapid rise in demand, Pacejet became a key component of building a world-class, in-house, distribution operation (in a brand-new facility).
Thus, Seal Shield began its from-the-ground-up, no-expense-spared reworking of its fulfillment operations and Pacejet has developed into a key member of the broader team. It was a welcome addition, especially amidst the colliding forces of unprecedented demand, supply chain slowdowns, and a quadrupling of its inventory holding capacity. While the human team dealt with the uncertainties of sourcing product and managing customer relationships, Pacejet could cut 50% of the human activity associated with packing and shipping.
Unpredictable markets also require the ability to rapidly seize unforeseen opportunities. While the domestic market has largely caught up with its need for antimicrobial office products, the same cannot be said for overseas. Pacejet’s international shipping and customs documentation automation allows Seal Shield to produce commercial invoices and certificates of origin right from its interface with NetSuite immediately when generating the shipping labels and bills of lading. Now, instead of 6-10 minutes of manual entry, fulfillment staff spend under 30 seconds reviewing automatically populated fields.
Though just beginning their journey together, Seal Shield has big plans for Pacejet. In addition to the core functionalities, it has implemented the Address Validation module, as a means of speeding transit times and reducing carrier-imposed penalties. Future efficiencies are also anticipated with Pacejet’s consolidation capabilities – something Seal Shield was previously unable to do with its dozens of daily parcel and monthly LTL shipments.
Seal Shield is clearly proud of its new fulfillment operation, hence its willingness to allow two academic institutions to profile it for their research. It’s not surprising, given leadership’s intense focus on adopting, and developing, industry-leading best practices. Pacejet is proud to be along for the ride, and being a good partner throughout the journey.
“We will invest what it takes to be successful in tools, training, and talent to execute these values. It’s what our customers expect from us, and we expect from ourselves. So, when we committed to opening and self-managing a new warehouse facility, we implemented the best of the best. When it came to shipping, that meant Pacejet. This software is an extension of our team and facilitated a smooth operation in our first opening month. I highly recommend Pacejet to any organization seeking a streamlined platform that integrates well with shipping providers and the ERP”