We have created an infrastructure that is optimized and scalable. S-One’s operational capabilities revolve around two areas: Information technology and supply chain. Within those disciplines, there are subcategories that include IT hardware and network administration, IT software, logistics and demand planning.
Information Technologies
IT: The mission of S-One IT is to be able to automate, integrate and scale virtually anything. This strategy begins with the infrastructure layer and extends through to the application layer.
Infrastructure: S-One uses top-of-the-line Cisco networking equipment for switch, route, wireless and firewall. The compute is all virtualized using VMware hypervisor on Nutanix hyperconverged servers. These Nutanix servers allow S-One to quickly scale as needed with very little systems administrator efforts. It also allows S-One to move operations to the warm site located in Wisconsin in the case of disaster recovery.
S-One has integrated more than 50 programs throughout the company in our global stack.
These programs include RingCentral (VoIP), nopCommerce (e-commerce and product management), HubSpot (Digital Marketing), Microsoft Dynamics (CRM), NetSuite (ERP), Titan (proprietary ordering system), Microsoft BI (Analytics) and DemandWorks (Demand Planning).
We are fully integrated with the United Parcel Service S-Plus shipping and warehouse system we are currently active in ten warehouses around the world (5 U.S., 1 CA, 1 UK, 1 NL, 1 DE, 1 AU, 1 SG). This integration makes S-One warehouse and shipping very scalable.
Amazon: S-One enjoys the best of both worlds and has integrated with Amazon on multiple platforms in four countries and two subsidiaries (U.S., IT, DE and UK through BMG and LexJet). At LexJet, products are sold by Amazon and fulfilled by LexJet. This is a typical commission relationship with Amazon. At BMG products are sold to and fulfilled by Amazon (Amazon stocks BMG products in their DCs in U.S., IT, DE and UK). This is not a typical relationship with Amazon as Amazon must want and sense a demand for branded products that it will purchase and market.
LexJet, BMG Americas and BMG United Kingdom have introduced an “Amazon Like” shopping experience on the internal websites. Our connections are fully integrated with supply chain, marketing and F&A resulting in another low-cost model.
The framework has been completed to add additional websites in additional countries using alternative currencies in as little as three weeks’ time depending on the amount of content S-One needs to populate. Today, S-One has completed development on an IT infrastructure capable of scaling to billions of dollars in revenue while adding minimal resources. The S-One IT team is in the process of building a data lake and data warehouse to maximize the use of 25 years worth of data S-One has collected. The data lake will be a central location in which all of S-One’s raw data from all 50 software programs in use are stored. The raw data will then be formatted and run through a master data management process to organize, define and manage the data into a single point of reference.
From here, the information moves to a data warehouse to be used for reporting, data analysis, machine learning and AI. With a continually increasing variety and volume of data in the S-One data bases, the data lake and data warehouse are critical to sales, marketing, supply chain and finance and accounting we are witnessing in every industry. This will be another first in our industry, allowing S-One to use and control big data.
Supply Chain
Logistics: The goal of S-One Supply Chain is to run the most efficient, best-in-class supply chain in the industry. S-One manages its supply chain through global agreements with UPS. UPS manages all warehousing and most outbound transportation for all divisions of S-One. Globally, we utilize the WMS of UPS’s S-Plus system, which is fully integrated into S-One’s ERP. Global integration allows S-One to easily track and roll-up all supply chain data by corporate, company, subsidiary and GL account.
This degree of integration allows S-One to manage a global supply chain moving over 140,000 orders per year, in and out of 11 warehouses to 84 countries around the world, with a team of only 12 people.