It’s pos­si­ble that when you pur­chased any­thing from an online mar­ket­place last year, Pack­able had some­thing to do with the trans­ac­tion. Based on Packable’s 2021 RISE with SAP tech­nol­o­gy invest­ment late last year, SAP S/4HANA also might have sup­port­ed the operation. 

Pack­able was found­ed in 2010 as Pharma­packs, a brick-and-mor­tar phar­ma­cy busi­ness. Today, the com­pa­ny char­ac­ter­izes itself as a lead­ing tech-enabled e‑commerce com­pa­ny sit­ting at the inter­sec­tion of brands, mar­ket­places, and cus­tomers. With more than 1,000 employ­ees across three sites and its Long Island, N.Y., head­quar­ters, Pack­able now ranks as the top U.S. third-par­ty sell­er on Amazon.

The com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to aggres­sive­ly expand from its core busi­ness­es, which include the com­merce, pack­ag­ing, and logis­tics behind online sales for B2B and B2C pack­aged goods. In addi­tion to its busi­ness on Ama­zon — and the brands, prod­ucts, and ser­vices Pack­able sup­ports there — the com­pa­ny works with eBay, Tar­get, Wal­mart, and Kroger, among oth­er mar­ket­places. In total, Pack­able main­tains rela­tion­ships with over 100 brand part­ners includ­ing tra­di­tion­al CPG com­pa­nies and dig­i­tal­ly native brands, offer­ing each brand a tai­lored eCom­merce solution. 

Packable’s ​“explo­sive growth made it a good time and the right time to get into ERP, [a sys­tem] that was inte­grat­ed” and could man­age the busi­ness in a robust way, said Ash Mehra, CIO. Mehra said that he and his team, with sys­tem inte­gra­tion exper­tise sup­plied from part­ner Beyond Tech­nolo­gies, explored both Oracle’s Net­Suite and SAP when eval­u­at­ing the best-fit ERP for Packable.

‘Ques­tion of When’

“We knew SAP would be the des­ti­na­tion; it became a ques­tion of when,” Mehra con­tin­ued. ​“As we took a look at RISE with SAP, the way it was offered, the capa­bil­i­ties it would deliv­er, what Pack­able could do and what our part­ner [Beyond Tech­nolo­gies] could deliv­er, we decid­ed we could take that step to a real­ly, real­ly strong ERP.”

The ​“when” ques­tion became increas­ing­ly urgent at Pack­able not only because of its chal­lenges in man­ag­ing the pan­dem­ic-induced online pur­chas­ing explo­sion, but also because late last year the com­pa­ny announced plans to go pub­lic, an offer­ing that’s expect­ed to close this spring. Mehra said that Pack­able need­ed a ​“sys­tem that would increase the vis­i­bil­i­ty around key met­rics and facil­i­tate effec­tive pub­lic com­pa­ny report­ing. We need­ed this to be done in a time­ly and cost-effec­tive manner.”

Mehra is among the exec­u­tives talk­ing up Packable’s tech­nol­o­gy infra­struc­ture and oper­a­tions in con­ver­sa­tions with investors. His slides ref­er­ence the ​“Pack­able IQ,” the pro­pri­etary plat­form com­posed of the com­merce engine, data engine, and mar­ket­ing engine. A com­pa­ny video ref­er­ences Packable’s ambi­tious — and achieved — 100-day effort to design and deploy RISE with SAP.

Improve­ments on the Rise

The ini­tial RISE with SAP project phase is already begin­ning to improve Packable’s finan­cial report­ing, inven­to­ry man­age­ment, sup­ply chain man­age­ment, and payables, among oth­er func­tions. Mehra said that Pack­able is on track to hit its 10-work­ing-day goal to report finan­cial results each quar­ter. Pack­able is also aim­ing to achieve the 3% indus­try bench­mark sav­ings for the cost of goods sold that’s asso­ci­at­ed with the three-way match functionality.

Pack­able is assess­ing its phase two work, which Mehra said will extend the ​“depth and breadth” of ERP ser­vices and capa­bil­i­ties across Packable’s glob­al­ly expand­ing busi­ness. These ERP tools, ana­lyt­ics, and insights are also expect­ed to accel­er­ate Packable’s over­all capa­bil­i­ties. These efforts will trans­form the com­pa­ny into a strong knowl­edge part­ner that can pro­vide an increas­ing array of prod­uct, price, and buy­er infor­ma­tion to mar­ket­places and manufactures.

Mehra said that Pack­able ​“lever­aged the wis­dom” embed­ded in the best prac­tices for RISE with SAP. His advice for oth­er orga­ni­za­tions seek­ing to achieve opti­mal results from tech­nol­o­gy invest­ments — as well as those mov­ing to SAP S/4HANA — is to real­ize that it’s akin to an ​“open heart surgery jour­ney for the busi­ness while it’s still operating.”

Among his lessons learned? Con­firm “ … that the orga­ni­za­tion is ready,” Mehra said. Be cer­tain of the ​“full com­mit­ment of lead­er­ship … and that your extend­ed teams are all in.”