Unlocking 90-minute wholesale drops for a multi-brand FMCG collective

The challenge

Northwind Collective runs eight beverage brands that sell into grocery, convenience, and event channels. Each brand launched in a different era, which meant duplicated systems: four ERPs, niche 3PL portals, and ad-hoc API connectors. The operations team spent most afternoons reconciling bookings, emailing late-stage updates, and forcing 3PLs to log into the same spreadsheet just to acknowledge rush orders.

How EQUOS9 helped

• Orchestrated order intake. All wholesale EDI, Shopify B2B, and manual request flows land in Order Manager. Rules auto-triage requests to the right warehouse lane and block orders that break brand-specific compliance steps.
• Inventory truth across nodes. The Inventory module reads bin-level counts from both in-house and outsourced DCs. Exceptions trigger replenishment runs or vendor drop-ships without waiting for a weekly planning meeting.
• Live warehouse execution. Warehouse operators use guided waves tied to customer SLAs. Photos, barcode scans, and truck seal data sync back to the account team instantly.
• Context-rich communications. Account managers open a contact record and see live order status, outstanding deductions, and previously escalated compliance issues. That context fuels proactive comms rather than just firefighting.

Results

Northwind now promises a 90-minute confirm window on every wholesale rush order. Stage gates that once lived in five spreadsheets are encoded in workflows, so onboarding a new brand is mostly mapping SKUs and customer rules. Finance trusts the shipment feed because every pallet photo, accessorial, and deduction tie back to the same object graph.

EQUOS9 gave us one canonical view of orders, freight, and customer nuance. When we onboarded two new beverage brands, the hardest part was changing our slide deck—because the operations playbook was already there.