For growing wholesale distributors, manual processes and disconnected systems often become the ceiling that limits how fast and how far the business can grow. When orders need to be entered by hand, inventory tracking lives on paper, and financial data requires constant reconciliation, teams spend more time managing workarounds than driving the business forward.
Global Beauty Care, a New York City-based wholesale distributor of skincare products, hit that ceiling as its retail partnerships expanded rapidly. Landing major accounts meant higher order volumes, more complex supply chain logistics, and greater pressure on a legacy system that simply wasn't built for the job.
In this article, we're highlighting how an Acumatica customer, Global Beauty Care, replaced a disconnected legacy system with a modern ERP platform, gaining real-time visibility, automated order processing, and the operational foundation to support continued growth. This story is shared for educational purposes to help ERP buyers understand what's possible with Acumatica.
Company Overview: Global Beauty Care
Founded in a New York City basement, Global Beauty Care (GBC) built a full line of innovative skincare products using advanced technology and quality ingredients. The product line includes facial wipes, retinol creams, and other skincare products designed to appeal to customers of all age groups.
Sales took off quickly. Today, GBC's products can be found in Walmart and other major retailers, collectively reaching more than 60,000 stores globally. That kind of rapid growth from a basement startup to a global wholesale operation required systems that could keep up.
The Challenge: A Legacy System That Couldn't Keep Pace With Growth
As GBC's retail partnerships grew, its internal systems fell behind. The company relied on a standalone financial system that was built years ago and wasn't designed for the wholesale distribution industry.
The limitations were significant:
- The software couldn't connect to the internet or link to third-party applications
- Employees couldn't easily copy and paste data or export to Excel
- The system struggled with data sets larger than 30,000 records
- The user interface was outdated, only filling about a third of a modern monitor
Beyond the software's limitations, operational processes added to the strain. Tracking inbound shipping containers from overseas vendors relied on an elaborate paper-based system. Without financial visibility, the accounting team spent hours on manual calculations, including tracking how much was owed to overseas factories, which often led to errors.
The biggest bottleneck, however, was order processing. GBC's largest customer operated more than 40 distribution centers, all placing orders every Thursday. Those orders needed to be routed within a couple of hours, and the legacy system had no way to import data or automate the process. The result was that half the company would stop what they were doing to manually enter orders, a process that consumed significant time and resources every single week.
Evaluating ERP Platforms for a Fast-Growing Distributor
GBC's leadership knew they needed a modern platform that could support rapid growth while providing end-to-end visibility across the supply chain. The requirements were clear:
- Strong inventory and order management capabilities
- Integrated EDI to handle large retail accounts
- Landed cost and container management solutions
- A growing ecosystem of third-party integrations
- A platform that would continue evolving with regular updates
After researching options, the team narrowed the field to Oracle NetSuite and Acumatica. NetSuite's pricing was a concern, and leadership worried about the number of customizations that would be required to fit GBC's workflows.
Why Global Beauty Care Chose Acumatica
Global Beauty Care ultimately selected Acumatica Distribution Edition, working with Acumatica ERP partner MIBAR for implementation.
According to the Acumatica-published case study, several factors made the platform the right fit, including:
- Developer-friendly architecture that allowed internal team involvement during implementation
- A growing ecosystem of integrated third-party solutions
- Regular software updates and continuous platform evolution
- A consumption-based pricing model that didn't charge per user
Under MIBAR's guidance, GBC implemented Acumatica's Distribution and Financial Management modules, along with SPS Commerce for EDI and PC Bennett's container management solution.
The Results: Five Benefits of Replacing a Legacy System With Connected ERP Software
After moving from a disconnected legacy system to a unified ERP platform, Global Beauty Care saw improvements across virtually every area of the business. These five outcomes highlight how real-time data, automation, and integrated operations supported GBC's continued growth.
1. Real-Time Visibility Across the Entire Business
With Acumatica in place, GBC's leadership gained an instant view of the company's status in real time. Where the old system offered no clear picture of open orders or post-invoicing processes, the new platform made that information available in seconds.
GBC's Director of Operations built custom dashboards that provide at-a-glance visibility into:
- Outstanding payments and receivables
- Incoming order volume
- Warehouse and fulfillment status
These dashboards don't just display data. They enable proactive decision-making. In one example, a quick check of a dashboard revealed a warehouse backup before it became a larger problem, allowing the team to address it immediately without running a single manual report.
2. Automated Order Processing That Saved Over Nine Hours per Week
The most dramatic operational improvement came in order processing. It previously required half the company to stop working and manually enter orders from 40-plus distribution centers. Now, it takes a single employee roughly eight minutes.
By integrating SPS Commerce for EDI and ERP connectivity, GBC eliminated manual data transfer between its largest retail customers and its ERP platform. Acumatica's automatic controls also removed the potential for invoicing errors, which had been a recurring risk under the old system.
That shift alone saved more than nine person-hours per week, freeing the team to focus on higher-value work instead of repetitive data entry.
3. A Better Way to Track and Pay for Overseas Shipments
For a wholesale distributor importing goods from around the world, tracking shipping containers is critical. GBC's old process relied on a complicated paper bulletin board that was fragile and error-prone.
With PC Bennett's container management solution integrated into Acumatica, GBC created a streamlined approach. Inventory is received onto a temporary virtual warehouse called "the ocean," which tracks what's in transit across multiple container orders. When a container arrives, receiving and billing happen automatically.
This eliminated the need for manual calculations and removed the risk of someone forgetting what had already been billed. The result was a complete overhaul of how the company manages payments to overseas factories.
4. Flexible, Growth-Friendly Pricing
As a growing company adding employees and increasing transaction volume, GBC benefited from Acumatica's consumption-based pricing model. Unlike traditional per-user licensing, this model doesn't penalize businesses for scaling.
New employees can be added to the system without triggering additional licensing fees, which is a significant advantage for companies in growth mode. Leadership no longer has to weigh the cost of giving someone system access against the business need for that access.
For distribution businesses evaluating ERP platforms, this kind of pricing flexibility can be a deciding factor, especially when headcount is expected to increase alongside revenue.
5. Increased Productivity and a Shift Toward Growth
With manual processes automated and data easily accessible, GBC's team became significantly more productive. The Director of Operations, who previously spent considerable time fielding IT questions and troubleshooting system issues, was able to redirect that time toward sales and business development.
Across the organization, employees spend less time on data entry and more time on work that directly contributes to growth. Acumatica's open architecture and OData integration also enabled custom reporting workflows, giving the team the flexibility to build exactly the reports they needed using tools like Excel connected directly to the ERP platform's data.
Why This Story Matters for ERP Buyers
Global Beauty Care's experience reflects a challenge that many wholesale distributors face: Rapid growth paired with legacy systems creates operational bottlenecks that no amount of manual effort can solve.
This Acumatica customer story shows what becomes possible when a growing distributor replaces disconnected tools with a unified ERP platform. Manual order entry that once consumed half the company's workforce turned into an eight-minute task for a single employee. Paper-based container tracking gave way to automated receiving and billing. Leadership went from waiting on manual reports to spotting warehouse issues in real time from a dashboard.
Perhaps most importantly, GBC's team stopped spending their time managing workarounds and started spending it on growth. For distribution-driven businesses balancing rapid expansion, complex supply chains, and major retail partnerships, the right ERP platform can turn operational limitations into a foundation for long-term success.
Disclosure: Global Beauty Care is an Acumatica customer that implemented the platform with a different Acumatica ERP partner. This story is shared for educational purposes and does not reflect a Stellar One member engagement.