Customer Success Story:
Crocs automates global file transfers with partners

“One cool way we are using Thru is as an FTP client so that we can allow users to manually upload files into our ecosystem. An example of this is receiving purchase orders from our retail system. The users upload a simple CSV file into Thru and the files are then picked up by our middleware solution and then a purchase order is created in SAP.”

Mark Meister
VP of Global Logistics & Integration Technology
Crocs

Crocs, Inc. (NASDAQ: CROX) is a leader in innovative footwear with more than $1 billion in annual revenue and has sold over 600 million pairs of shoes in over 90 countries.

Business Objectives

To keep its booming footwear business agile and always equipped to meet rapidly changing customer demands, Crocs leverages state-of-the-art technologies to automate critical business processes and improve operational efficiency. A key part of Crocs’ business processes involves this exchange of files with internal and external systems over multiple protocols. Every day, Crocs exchanges hundreds of files with its partners, customers and employees worldwide.

These files range from spreadsheets to financial statements to purchase orders across a breadth of systems and applications: SAP ERP, Aptos retail, SuccessFactors HR, Kronos labor, Maersk freight forwarding, EDI VAN, banks and many more, each requiring individualized solutions for automating those file transfers.

Technology Challenges

Crocs’ IT department had recently been tasked with transforming the majority of its infrastructure from on-premises to cloud. As part of this journey, the team saw an opportunity to modernize its Oracle Fushion middleware solution being used to manage file transfer automation across the organization.

Oracle Fusion is an on-premises application, requiring significant IT overhead to support and maintain. This system also requires lengthy, complex configuration when connecting partners and internal systems, making it costly and time-consuming for Crocs’ IT staff to quickly deliver new configurations in response to global lines of business (LOB) project requests. For example, creating a single file transfer connection to its freight-forwarding provider took between 2 and 4 hours to code, configure, test and deploy. To increase delivery speed of file transfer projects (operational efficiency) and decrease IT overhead (expenses), the company felt its file transfer infrastructure was an ideal candidate to modernize with an agile cloud solution.

“It’s an intuitive solution. The beauty of Thru is that the complexity is masked behind the simplicity of the user interface … the inherent simplicity, rapid delivery and timing are definitely big drivers of why we chose Thru.”

Don McIntosh
Director IT, Development and Enterprise Systems Architecture
Crocs

Solution

Crocs selected Thru as its cloud MFT solution to modernize file transfer automation across its partner network and global organization. There were numerous factors that influenced the decision to go with Thru; most important was finding a partner to collaborate on the design of the ideal file transfer solution for Crocs. Our willingness to work alongside Crocs’ IT department to design a customized solution was key to project success.

The company has now migrated file transfers away from Oracle Fusion middleware to Thru to accelerate the creation of file transfer connections between its various systems and trading partners around the world. Now, Crocs achieves faster response times to internal file transfer requests. When a new file transfer project is submitted to Crocs’ IT department, the team can set up the connection within 30 minutes instead of 4 hours. This has resulted in increased business agility and freed up valuable IT resources to focus on revenue-generating projects.

“As groups in Crocs hear of our success of building simple file automation solutions with Thru, they are coming to us to see if we can do the same for them … We wanted to provide an enterprise-wide foundation for file transfer activities. As we go through and uncover needs in other groups, we have a more common approach to how we transfer files around the enterprise.”

Mark Meister
VP of Global Logistics & Integration Technology
Crocs

An example of how Thru is being used to automate file transfers in Crocs can be seen in the company’s retail department. The company automates file transfers from its global point of sale (POS) systems located at Crocs retail locations and pulls the files into its analytics platforms. One of the biggest benefits Crocs experiences is that they can now build file transfer connections up to 8 times faster than with its previous solution. In addition to file transfer automation between systems, Thru enables Crocs users around the world to log in to the system to manually upload files for various business processes.

Business Impact and Results

Thru is helping Crocs’ IT team deliver file transfer projects much faster than before. Adoption of Thru is scaling rapidly; the company has ramped from 0 to 20,000+ monthly file movements in a short period of time because of the value it provides.

• Faster Creation of File Transfer Connections
  With our no-code interface, Crocs can now create file transfer connections faster than when using Oracle Fusion middleware as an MFT solution. The simplicity of the interface to configure and schedule file transfers over multiple protocols on the fly has significantly improved delivery time and increased productivity for the company’s IT staff.
• Simple User Experience
  One of the biggest benefits Crocs identified was the simplicity of the user interface. Don McIntosh, Director of IT, Development and Enterprise Systems Architecture at Crocs, stated, “The beauty of Thru is that the complexity is masked behind the simplicity of the user interface.”
• MFT Now Aligns with Hybrid Cloud Strategy
  Another reason Crocs selected Thru was because it aligns with Crocs’ hybrid cloud strategy. “We have an enterprise plan where we are moving towards a hybrid cloud strategy. We knew we didn’t want the overhead of running this solution on-premises, to alleviate things like patching and upgrading infrastructure,” said Mark Meister, VP of Global Logistics & Integration Technology at Crocs.
• Lower IT Overhead Costs
  Crocs’ Oracle Fusion middleware generated high overhead costs, not only because of the complexity and developer expertise required to use the product, but also the overhead expense associated with on-premises software, hardware, upgrades, support staff, etc. Because Thru is an intuitive cloud platform, even a citizen integrator can deploy new connections. Overhead is substantially reduced as it is a fully managed cloud service.
• Synergy Among Global Lines of Business
  Thru has generated increased synergy among Crocs’ global departments. For example, Crocs’ IT team heard about the retail team’s need to pull POS logs from Crocs stores into an analytics platform. They were able to easily and quickly accomplish this, resulting in faster time to information for critical business decisions.

Continue reading about how Crocs improves business agility by moving to the cloud »