Orderful Raises $19M to Simplify EDI Integrations for Logistics Community

Cloud platform Orderful announced Friday it has recently closed a $19 million Series B funding round led by GLP Capital Partners with participation from Andreessen Horowitz and Initialized Capital to help all supply chain actors gain visibility into their networks through electronic data interchange (EDI).

"While the front end of commerce has seen significant innovation over the past decade, much of the back end of the supply chain is built on disparate systems and manual processes. We see significant investment opportunities in the modernization of the supply chains, and Orderful provides a leap forward with EDI integration," said Dan Ward, senior managing director for GLP Capital Partners.

Orderful founder and CEO Erik Kiser started the company in 2017 when he began to see the supply chain industry going through its technological revolution and interchanging data among multiple parties.

Kiser explained to FreightWaves that while many larger firms are beginning to use application programming interfaces to exchange data, he recognized a number of supply chain participants would continue to use EDI to communicate with one another. 

He said that Orderful needed to be a platform that could both meet enterprises where they are today and give them the right technology to scale into the future.

"The incumbents seemed to be providing managed technology services and were pushing logistics companies to basically outsource the building of integrations. I thought, ‘How can we build a platform that brings these companies together directly?' So we created an API platform for EDI that benefits both sides of the supply chain by providing a self-service experience and enabling companies to choose to integrate with us in whatever data format they are most comfortable with," said Kiser.

Funding details	Orderful
Funding amount	$19 million
Funding round	Series B
Lead investor	GLP Capital Partners
Secondary investors	Andreessen Horowitz and Initialized Capital
Business goals from the round	Expand EDI network and grow sales and engineering team
Total funding	$32 million

He said that what makes Orderful unique is the ease of adding EDI requirements for enterprise connections to the platform, making it possible for customers, specifically logistics providers, to quickly connect to their customers' available freight. 

Normally, even with outsourced companies that specialize in API and EDI connections, these connections can take weeks to set up and test for proper utilization, often having logistics providers changing the way they store and communicate their data in order for the connections to function properly. 

These connections are typically all driven by human interaction between the shipper and carrier, coordinated over email and phone for weeks, if not months.

For example, one of Orderful's large accounts, Koch Industries, uses the platform to trade available truck data with its carrier partners. Kiser explained that in the past, custom integrations had to be made by each carrier in order to connect to Koch's systems. Carriers are now able to begin trading data within minutes.

"Now carriers can log in and self-service their communication channels, and EDI testing with customers without needing to pick up the phone, or worse, outsource someone to make the connection," said Kiser.

While Orderful is only 4 years old, its database of established EDI connections is massive.

With a full list available on the company's website, its EDI portfolio consists of over 1000 supply chain participants from shippers, like Aldi, Dollar General DG, Fanatics, and Walmart WMT, to logistics providers, like XPO Logistics XPO, Kuehne+Nagel and Hub Group, to carriers, like J.B. Hunt JBHT, Allen Lund, and Dayton Freight Lines.

As Orderful continues to gain customers, this network of established EDI connections continues to grow as well.

"Once a company is published on our platform, anyone can reuse those connections," said Kiser.

Kiser plans to eventually create a product to help carriers navigate his network to expand their sales, and vice versa, help enterprises grow their carrier networks.

Orderful's intention to fix a single problem affecting the whole supply chain has caught investors' attention.

"​​We're excited to see Orderful expand their network and reach. As more enterprises adopt Orderful as a software solution, the fewer errors there will be in supply chain data trading and the quicker supply chains will be able to integrate. The result is a cleaner, more efficient global supply chain," said Brett Gibson, partner at Initialized Capital.

"With Orderful, logistics companies don't need to continually expand their EDI surface area with the growth of their business. They connect once to Orderful's network, and Orderful's technology takes it from there, automating data translation so each customer and business get the data they need in their preferred format," said David Ulevitch, partner at Andreessen Horowitz.

"They don't require companies to integrate with their APIs as they natively handle X12 and traditional communication channels, all while giving enterprises the opportunity to move EDI to the cloud. They are bringing shippers closer to carriers in hours, enabling both sides of the supply chain to benefit."

With its recent capital infusion, Orderful plans on leveraging its investors' knowledge to scale and grow its current product suite and grow its network to offer more value to customers.

"We want to continue connecting supply chains and networks that are unknowingly overlapping," said Kiser. "We want to create network effects that make it really easy for companies to trade and reduce the amount of time and money it takes to onboard new network participants."

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