In 1990, Manhattan Associates chose their name based on their location in Manhattan Beach, California, where they established themselves as a supply chain and order management software provider. They operated there for a short time before realizing most of their customers—mainly large retailers, consumer goods brands, manufacturers, and distributors—were actually on the East coast.
“They literally moved the company over a weekend in U-Haul trucks, continuing to code along the way as they moved back eastward to deliver for projects,” says Brian Kinsella, Senior Vice President of Product at Manhattan.
Since then, Manhattan has built a reputation of helping enterprise businesses operate more efficiently by optimizing labor, inventory costs, and transportation expenses. Throughout all of this, it’s only recently that they’ve become a Shopify partner. “We had been around the space for a long time and have dealt with a lot of commerce platforms over the years. There was just this surge of momentum from Shopify that frankly, over the preceding 20 years, we didn't see,” says Brian.
Shopify's investment in commerce and work with enterprise brands ultimately drew Manhattan to the partnership. “We started naturally bumping into one another, including with some key customers,” says Brian. “And at that point, it just made sense to have a direct relationship and start building things together.”
Manhattan chose to partner with Shopify because of:
- A shared ethos for building innovative software solutions that address client challenges quickly
- The opportunity to add post-purchase experiences to clients’ unified commerce strategy
- The ability to optimize the customer lifecycle from demand through fulfillment
Building commerce software with a shared ethos
Manhattan has been in the order management space for a long time—which means they know just how challenging it can be for enterprise brands to innovate quickly on a legacy or custom platform.
Some of the biggest challenges for Manhattan’s clients include:
- Visibility into inventory and fulfillment: Many clients feel stuck trying to achieve basic inventory visibility, particularly if their products span global markets or they operate across online and in-store channels. As Brian puts it, these are questions like, “Do I have it?” and “Can I send the order to that store for it to be fulfilled?”
- Ensuring orders are fulfilled quickly, accurately, and cost-effectively: Brands need to focus on optimizing their view of inventory for greater profitability, including considering factors like inventory depth and whether they have overstocked items they should use to fulfill online orders.
- Providing accurate and seamless post-order experiences for customers: Often, customers lack insight into the status of their order after it's placed. They may want to make changes, but aren’t given an easy way to do so. Or, they’ll be provided with vague delivery estimates that further erode their customer confidence.
Manhattan helps enterprise brands smooth out these post-purchase operations, but the software provider saw a major opportunity for growth by tapping into the entire customer journey. They wanted to couple their technology with a commerce platform that could provide fast and efficient experiences for customers as they browse, add to cart, and checkout—all through a seamless native integration that could quickly replace their clients’ complex back end supply chain integrations with legacy and custom platforms. And it’s what led them to partner with Shopify.
“We felt like a lot of the same ethos inspired how we build our software, which is low friction, fast delivery, and efficient. And so as we were going to select that next generation of commerce platform partner, Shopify was the clear choice.”
—Brian Kinsella, Senior Vice President of Product, Manhattan
Adding post-purchase experiences to clients’ unified commerce strategy
Manhattan’s partnership with Shopify means that the software provider can now help enterprise brands like Reebok, Levi’s, L Brands, and Shoe Carnival think through the entire customer journey by creating consistent experiences from demand through fulfillment.
With Manhattan Active Omni, an order management system (OMS), customer service, and customer engagement solution, enterprise brands can seamlessly integrate with the Shopify platform. The app gives brands global visibility of their inventory across their entire network—including where every unit is across every store, distribution center, drop ship vendor, and truck in transit. Brands can consider these factors in real time, ensuring they fulfill from the lowest possible cost location and drive the right margin. Better yet, Shopify is the only commerce platform on the market that natively integrates with Manhattan Active Omni, meaning enterprise brands can get a competitive advantage by easily swapping their legacy systems for modern commerce tools.
“ Maybe it's going to cost me a little bit more to ship it from that location. Maybe it might even take another day to get to the customer, but by reducing the probability of markdown in that location, by taking that demand and using that overstocked unit of inventory, the profitability across the season as a whole goes up dramatically,” says Brian.
Manhattan’s OMS integration with Shopify also gives customers access to more accurate product location and delivery information. Traditional order management systems may give customers a window of 7 to 9 days when their package will arrive. With Manhattan and Shopify, customers are given multiple delivery options with specific dates, an experience that drives buyer confidence and ultimately leads to higher conversion.
“Being able to surface all of that at the point of capture drives more conversion and drives more sales,” says Brian. “Essentially, the app is built to make sure that all of that data is available to Shopify so that intelligence is available to the consumer as they're browsing and checking out. Then once the order is captured through Shopify, our algorithms kick in to figure out exactly the best way to fulfill that order.”
Optimizing the entire commerce lifecycle
By making it easy for Manhattan and Shopify technologies to work together, Manhattan has opened the door for enterprise brands to extend their commerce strategy to include optimizing their post-purchase operations.
“As you think about the totality of the lifecycle from demand creation to ultimate fulfillment, every step in the way matters for a net promoter score, for brand loyalty, and for total lifetime value of that customer. What we've done working with Shopify is really think about the totality of that experience.”
—Brian Kinsella, Senior Vice President of Product, Manhattan
Whether the goal is to have a great browsing experience, give customers the ability to change their order post-capture, or provide post-delivery services like return and exchanges, Manhattan is continuing to make sure that each point along the way is as low friction as possible.
As for what’s next, Manhattan sees a bright future with Shopify. Particularly, they’re excited to innovate quickly and solve problems together—including flowing Manhattan’s OMS data into Shop Pay, making it visible for customers during checkout and tackling the current uncertainties with global trade.
“Like Manhattan, Shopify works at a very fast pace of innovation, so we can go from whiteboard to shipped product in a very short period of time and make a lot of progress,” says Brian. “A s we jointly envision what we want that next generation of commerce experience to be, being able to co-create and co-develop with that thought leadership that we're getting from the Shopify side has just been really fun.”
