From a green screen to everything automated but the boxes

One desk, three computers

When SEAD met A.J. Siris in November 2025, the business ran on Epicor, installed on an IBM server from the early 2000s running Windows XP in the warehouse. The accounting was done on a green-screen terminal, and keeping that system supported cost $3,000 a month. If the warehouse lost power, everything stopped.

Two more Windows XP machines sat beside it. One received Walmart's orders; the other worked out in Excel how each order should be packed. Order details were written down and keyed again across three computers, and the packing plan was copied out by hand for the warehouse team.

It worked because two people knew how it all fit together, and both planned to retire in June 2026. A.J. Siris needed a new way of running before then, and it had one: both retired on schedule.

A.J. Siris had a firm deadline: the two people who knew the old system were retiring. We guided the move of the books, brought Walmart's EDI into a portal of their own and took the business off a machine that stopped whenever the power did. We acted as their CIO from the first conversation with OpenText to the first invoice, and we are still building with them.

Alexander WrightPresident & CEO

New books, with the history kept

The accounting came first. SEAD worked with Epicor to take a full backup of the data, then guided the move to QuickBooks Online: the 2025 year-end trial balance became the opening entries, so the new books started clean at the turn of the year.

Nothing older was lost. The full history sits outside QuickBooks Online, in files A.J. Siris keeps and in SEAD's data repository, where it can still be searched and analyzed.

SEAD also advised on connecting the bank and credit card accounts to QuickBooks Online, so transactions arrive by themselves and bank reconciliation is largely a matter of confirming the matches.

SEAD as the CIO, and Walmart's documents

With the books in place, SEAD turned to Walmart. A.J. Siris had no technology team, so SEAD took the role: it worked with OpenText, the EDI provider between A.J. Siris and Walmart, held the project to its timeline, and represented A.J. Siris in every technical conversation. That is a CIO as a service, in practice.

EDI is how Walmart and its suppliers exchange business documents, each with a standard number. A.J. Siris now receives and sends the full set, and each one lands where it belongs.

How SEAD approaches work like this is in connecting systems.

From order to invoice, nothing retyped

Each purchase order from Walmart becomes an order in A.J. Siris's portal, a Co-Wright custom application SEAD built for the business. Nearly all of A.J. Siris's orders now arrive this way, and their lines are fixed as they arrive.

Every order moves through four states in turn: ordered, processing, shipped and invoiced. It cannot be marked shipped until its tracking and costs are in, and once shipped it is locked, so what is invoiced is what was sent. Changes are kept on record.

Ship-by dates are worked back, in business days, from each distribution center's own delivery schedule, so every order leaves in time to arrive when that center expects it.

When an order ships, the ship notice and the invoice go back to Walmart, and the invoice is created in QuickBooks Online automatically. The portal checks every 15 minutes and never creates the same invoice twice.

When Walmart adjusts a payment, the credit or debit arrives as its own document and is listed against the order and invoice it adjusts, so the team can see at a glance what is still to be matched.

View the interactive dashboard

Credit and debit adjustments, redrawn in Co-Wright Intelligence: each one against its original order and invoice, with what is open and what is still to be matched.

Packing, printed from the portal

The packing plan no longer lives in a spreadsheet. SEAD streamlined the calculation and built it into the portal's order form. Each line is split into the supplier's vendor packs, largest first, and every pack is tried against each carton size the warehouse uses, in every orientation and within the carton's weight limit. A pack goes into the first carton with room, a new carton is started when none has, and anything no carton can hold is flagged before it reaches the warehouse.

Change an item or a quantity and the plan is worked out again, with the order's pieces, packs and weight. The plan is saved on the order, carton by carton.

The pending orders board shows what ships this week, orders by ship date and where they are going. Open an order to see its cartons and print its paperwork straight from the order: the order slip, the packing slip and a carton slip for each box's contents.

View the interactive dashboard

Pending orders, redrawn in Co-Wright Intelligence: what ships this week, orders by ship date and by state, and every pending order. Open one to see its cartons and print its slips.

Packing the boxes is the one step still done by hand. Shipping labels are next: printing them straight from the order is being tested now and goes live soon.

The whole business on one screen

Sales, orders and every list behind them now sit in one portal. The sales dashboard shows where orders stand, sales, order count and average order over the period with their trends, sales by customer and by item, and every open order, each a click from its details. More on how SEAD builds dashboards is in business intelligence.

View the interactive dashboard

Sales, redrawn in Co-Wright Intelligence: order status; sales, order count and average order with their trends; sales by customer and by item; and the open orders, each opening to its details.

Since August 2026 all of it runs in SEAD's cloud, on the same SOC 2 Type II audited platform as every SEAD system (how Co-Wright handles security), and the data is backed up. Nothing depends on the warehouse's power or its internet connection. The team works from a desktop or a phone, anywhere with internet access, and work that used to take days now takes minutes.

Next, FedEx

SEAD is now working with FedEx to automate how the warehouse and FedEx communicate about each delivery: the next piece of a system that has grown one step at a time.

That is SEAD's Scale phase: one system, extended as the business asks more of it, without starting again.

John F. Woods, Jr. leads A.J. Siris as its President and CEO. He believed in what SEAD built for the business enough to join SEAD as its Chief Financial Officer in 2026, and he continues to lead A.J. Siris.