Silipint Quenches Operational Gaps with NetSuite

Background

Wanting to serve beer at his company’s trade show booth to promote Tazlab’s new travel silicone AquaFur Dog Bowl, Rick Fredland discovered an incredible hole in the drinkware market. The simple, durable, and versatile silicone material, he thought, could make a perfect pint “glass” marketing piece, if he could customize it.

Silipint, which holds the patent on all semi-rigid silicone drinkware, produces silicone pints, half-pints, rocks glasses, base tumblers, shot glasses, dog bowls, and more. Silipints’ durable drinking glasses are unbreakable and fun, and tough enough for kids. Silipint drinking cups are made from 100% food grade silicone, which consists of four readily available and abundant elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and silica, the second-most abundant element in the earth’s crust. Silipints are BPA-free, non-toxic, FDA approved, hypoallergenic, and sterilized.

Silipint was challenged with its use of Salesforce CRM because it was not integrated with its Oracle NetSuite back-office software. Oftentimes, orders would have to be entered twice and corrected. “As you know, Salesforce is very expensive,” says Jessica Mardini, Director of Customer Experience for Silipint. “So, we decided to save sanity and money, and go with NetSuite for ERP and CRM to avoid a lot of the issues coming from the orders being in two places,” continues Mardini.

Implementation and Integrations

This friction between front-office and back-office systems quietly undermined growth and frustrated the Silipint customer service and sales teams. When CRM platforms like Salesforce aren’t integrated with ERP systems like NetSuite, businesses often fall into the trap of duplicate data entry, manual corrections, and delayed insights—exactly what was happening at Silipint. This resulted in process inefficiency, data silos, and dispirited employees.

Silipint didn’t consider other solutions besides NetSuite because the team knew they wanted to integrate CRM data with its existing NetSuite ERP solution. The team found Velosio through their former President, who had a business connection there.

“We had poked around a little bit to find a partner, but we had barely gotten started when our former President said, ‘Hey, I know a guy, let’s have a meeting. We met with Velosio, and it just felt right, so we went ahead with the partnership,”  –  Jessica Mardini, Director of Customer Experience for Silipint.

NetSuite CRM implementation went smoothly, with well-executed planning, coordination, and alignment across teams. “We had a bunch of open data that we needed to go from Salesforce to NetSuite, and that’s what Velosio did for us,” says Mardini. “I’m so thankful to have had Velosio walk us through all of this,” continues Mardini. Silipint’s open data included leads, open orders, and open mockups for custom orders – all in various stages of development. Silipint knew it would be a challenge to re-enter all these open items into NetSuite, so Velosio ported them over into the new system so that the team could continue working on them without interruption. Additionally, Velosio built a custom app for Silipint so they could submit custom mock-up requests in NetSuite and chat back and forth about them as they progress. “Customer orders are a large part of our business, so this app is a huge advantage,” describes Mardini. As part of their plan to streamline solutions, Silipint also selected RF-Smart for inventory management, as it is one of NetSuite’s preferred partners. “By using NetSuite’s preferred partners, integration is seamless,” says Mardini.

System Benefits

Silipint is benefiting from NetSuite in many ways – especially when it comes to efficiency and time saving.

“With one source of the truth, there is much less time spent and so many fewer touch points than before,” says Mardini. “Before, if an order was closed, I had to edit it in two places. Our sales people didn’t have access to NetSuite, so I had to spend time on that for all orders. It has saved me hours and hours because I no longer have to edit orders for the salespeople. They are all trained and can manage their orders in NetSuite. And just the continuity of information has been great. We no longer have to pull reports out of two places,” continues Mardini. User acceptance is high, and the salesperson who has been at Silipint the longest thanked Mardini for the smooth transition.

“This is her fourth order entry system with the company, and she messaged me and said ‘Oh my gosh, thank you so much for going through this and for being prepared and training us.’ She said this is the smoothest change in order entry system she’s ever had – everything’s organized, and it’s just been much better than the three prior times,” continues Mardini.

The majority of Silipint’s business is custom imprinting directly to the consumer, or through a mom-and-pop shop, or a promotional distributor. Now, having one source of the truth and one order entry system has greatly improved efficiency for the organization.

“NetSuite is a ‘can do’ solution,” says Mardini. “Do you want to do it? You just need to have someone customize it to your business needs. Even if NetSuite doesn’t do everything you need it to do, the apps and partners are reasonably priced and seamlessly integrated,” says Jessica Mardini, Director of Customer Experience for Silipint.

Strategic partnerships during a NetSuite project can be game-changers—especially when both organizations work together towards a successful rollout. “I’m super appreciative of the Velosio team who held my hand after our original project lead left,” says Mardini. “I am not a software person, and there was just an extreme amount of patience with me to work through to get the answers that they needed to result in the final product that we wanted. I am just so thankful that everybody was patient and kind and led me through the project to get this job done,” concludes Mardini.

Great Partnership

To ensure consistent onboarding and upskilling on NetSuite CRM, Mardini created standard operating procedures (SOPs) for all the processes within NetSuite. “After creating SOPs for the teams, I trained them on creating a new lead, entering orders, editing orders, and much more in a big group training, as well as individual training,” says Mardini. “For the first couple of weeks, we had meetings with the customer service team to answer any questions that came up as they began using the system. This was suggested by one of our customer service people, and I thought it was a fantastic idea. I will be implementing this in almost every project going forward. These weekly check-ins were a skill share for half an hour, where we asked ‘Hey, did you find anything in NetSuite that was hard for you, or easy for you, or did you learn something? Did you find a way to do something that you didn’t know about’? The skill share was super helpful to everybody while we all got comfortable entering orders and navigating the new system,” continues Mardini.

Work With Velosio

Velosio offers a strategic partnership to help you navigate business challenges and prepare for the future. As a trusted partner, we provide technology, services, and guidance tailored to your needs. With deep expertise in Microsoft solutions, we bring fresh ideas and practical knowledge to support your success. Learn how you can work with us to optimize your business solution. Give Velosio a call.