Turning a New Storefront into a Connected Business
About The Company
Plumbing Distributors, Inc (PDI) is a family-owned wholesale distributor headquartered in Lawrenceville, Georgia, serving customers across Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina. With more than 50 years of industry experience, the company offers a broad portfolio of plumbing, lighting, kitchen, and bath products through its distribution branches, retail showrooms, and Kohler Signature Stores.
The Need for a Connected Ecosystem
PDI was investing in a modern Shopify storefront to deliver a better buying experience for its customers. Because the website was still in its early stages of development, the integration couldn’t simply be plugged in after the site was complete. Instead, both projects had to move forward together, requiring careful planning and collaboration to ensure every workflow would function as expected once the storefront went live.
- Integrating Shopify with Eclipse from the ground up.
- Enabling real-time synchronization of inventory, pricing, customers, orders, shipments, and payments.
- Supporting customer-specific pricing for B2B buyers.
- Automating order processing between Shopify and Eclipse.
- Providing customers with accurate shipment tracking information.
- Managing complex customer records, including 500+ legacy ship-to locations.
- Creating a scalable integration that could grow alongside the new eCommerce platform.
How DCKAP Helped
Instead of a one-size-fits-all connector method, DCKAP worked alongside PDI and its Shopify implementation team to build an integration that evolved with the project. Because the new Shopify storefront was still under development, the integration had to be designed, tested, and refined in parallel, ensuring both systems were ready to work seamlessly at launch. Every workflow was tailored to support PDI’s B2B operations while maintaining the flexibility to scale as the business grew.
To bring this vision to life, DCKAP implemented the following integration pipelines:
Customer & Location Sync (Eclipse → Shopify):
Automated the synchronisation of customer accounts, contacts, and bill-to/ship-to locations from Eclipse to Shopify, ensuring customer information remained accurate and up to date across both systems.
Dynamic B2B Pricing (Eclipse → Shopify via Real-Time API):
Enabled real-time, customer-specific pricing by retrieving contract pricing directly from Eclipse whenever B2B customers browsed products or updated their carts.
Inventory Sync (Eclipse → Shopify):
Kept inventory levels updated automatically at regular intervals, giving customers accurate stock visibility while helping prevent overselling.
Order Sync ( Shopify ↔ Eclipse):
Automatically transferred online orders from Shopify into Eclipse while also syncing offline orders and quote conversions back to Shopify, providing customers with a complete order history.
Shipment & Fulfilment Updates (Eclipse → Shopify):
Passed shipment status, tracking information, fulfilment updates, and pickup notifications from Eclipse to Shopify, giving customers real-time visibility into their orders.
Payment Sync (Shopify → Eclipse):
Automatically posted Shopify credit card payments into Eclipse, streamlining payment reconciliation and reducing manual effort for the finance team.
Minimum Order Quantity (MOQ) Management (Eclipse → Shopify):
Synced product-specific ordering rules from Eclipse to Shopify, ensuring customers could only order products in the required quantities.
Product Sync (Eclipse → Shopify):
Kept product information aligned between Eclipse and Shopify, ensuring customers always had access to accurate product data while supporting both standard and customer-specific pricing.
The Business Impact
The integration transformed the way PDI’s Shopify storefront and Eclipse ERP worked together. By automating critical business processes and eliminating manual handoffs, the solution improved operational efficiency, accelerated order processing, and provided a scalable foundation to support PDI’s continued digital growth.
The results included:
Greater Operational Efficiency: Automated eight core business processes, eliminating manual order entry, payment posting, inventory updates, and other repetitive tasks across the order-to-cash workflow.
Improved Performance: Reduced inventory sync time for 15,000 records from approximately 1.5 hours to around 5 minutes, while significantly improving the overall online shopping experience with a faster storefront.
Reliable, Scalable Operations: Built a dependable integration with automated monitoring, duplicate order protection, and accurate handling of complex fulfilment scenarios, enabling day-to-day operations to run with confidence.
Positive Customer and Team Experience: Faster order processing and real-time information improved the experience for both customers and internal teams. Following launch, orders moved through the system so efficiently that warehouse pick tickets were generated almost immediately after purchase.
A Long-Term Technology Partnership: The success of the initial implementation led PDI to expand its engagement with DCKAP, adding new integration initiatives including Salesforce, CRM, EDI, financial systems, and RMA enhancements.
Looking Ahead
With Shopify and Eclipse working seamlessly together, PDI is well-positioned to continue expanding its digital capabilities. The success of the project has already paved the way for additional integrations, helping the business build a strong and connected technology foundation.
If you’re looking to solve similar challenges or prepare your business for future growth, our team is here to help. Tell us what you’re working on, and let’s explore the best way to bring your systems together.
