1,000 Dropship Orders/Day Across Five Channels

The Challenge

The three systems in the previous stack didn’t talk to each other. Sage 100 held the inventory and financial data. SPS managed the EDI connections to Walmart and Target. ScanCo and Starship handled shipping labels. None of them shared data automatically. Every night, someone was manually reconciling what had happened across all three systems and correcting the discrepancies.

Dropship routing was entirely manual. When an order came in for a product that would be dropshipped, someone had to decide which vendor should fulfill it — based on which vendors were in stock, which were fastest, which were cheapest. At 200 orders per day, that was manageable with enough staff attention. At peak volume approaching 1,000 orders per day, it wasn’t.

The EDI channels — Walmart and Target — required SPS as a separate integration layer. Orders from those channels didn’t flow into the same fulfillment workflow as Shopify orders. They required additional processing steps that increased the complexity of managing five channels simultaneously.

The business needed a system that treated all five channels as a single order stream, automated the routing decisions for warehouse versus dropship fulfillment, and eliminated the manual reconciliation that was consuming hours each week.

Why SkuNexus

The channel breadth — two Shopify stores plus Walmart, Amazon, and Target through EDI — required a platform that handled both API-based channel integration and EDI connectivity in the same system. SkuNexus handles both natively, so orders from all five channels route through the same fulfillment queue regardless of origin.

The hybrid fulfillment model — some orders warehoused, some dropshipped — needed configurable routing logic that could determine the optimal fulfillment source for each order based on inventory availability, vendor cost, geographic proximity, and business rules. That routing capability is built into SkuNexus’s order management architecture.

The vendor management functionality gave dropship vendors structured access to their orders and inventory without requiring the manual coordination that had been consuming operational bandwidth. Purchase orders to vendors generate automatically, and vendor confirmations flow back through the system without manual data entry.

What Was Built

Five-Channel Order Consolidation

Orders from both Shopify stores, Amazon, Walmart, and Target flow through a single SkuNexus order queue. EDI connectivity for the big-box channels is handled within the platform rather than through a separate service. All five channels see unified inventory levels in real time.

Automated Dropship Routing

Every order entering the system is evaluated against routing rules: Does the warehouse have inventory? Which dropship vendor is in stock? Which vendor is geographically closest to the customer? What are the relative costs? The routing decision that previously required manual judgment for each order now executes automatically. At 1,000 orders per day, that automation is the difference between a sustainable operation and one that requires unscalable manual effort.

Vendor Management and PO Automation

Dropship vendors connect to SkuNexus through a dedicated vendor interface. When an order routes to a vendor, a purchase order generates automatically. Vendor confirmations and tracking information flow back through the system. The manual coordination loop between the retailer and its vendor network is replaced by automated data exchange.

Hybrid Warehouse Operations

In-house warehouse fulfillment runs alongside dropship routing through the same platform. In-house orders route to warehouse pick queues. Dropship orders route to the appropriate vendor. Both fulfillment paths report into the same operational dashboard, so the team manages one system rather than two separate workflows.

The Results

The three-system stack that required nightly reconciliation and manual routing decisions is replaced by a single platform that handles all five channels, automated routing, and vendor coordination in a unified workflow.

At peak volume — approaching 1,000 orders per day — the routing decisions that previously required human judgment now execute automatically. The operation scales to peak without the proportional increase in manual effort that the previous stack demanded.

Inventory data is accurate across all five channels in real time. Oversell risk from mismatched inventory between channels is eliminated. Vendor purchase orders go out automatically. Manual reconciliation is gone.

The business can grow channel count, vendor count, and order volume without the constraint of a stack that couldn’t integrate.