How An Online Company Store Saves Money

If you’re in the business of both supporting an organization with multiple locations and controlling costs, knowing what is being spent in every department is imperative. Large organizations that lack a central control for monitoring and approving spending may lose more than they realize, but they’ll never be able to pinpoint the issue without a system for tracking purchases.

Do You Really Have Control Over Organization Spending?

Knowing exactly what is being spent across a large organization that doesn’t have a central program in place is difficult, nearly impossible.

Large companies with multiple locations and/or remote employees often find it difficult to track spending because various locations and employees may order corporate uniforms, and marketing or sales materials on their own. Are you one of these inefficient organizations? Consider the questions below.

Questions to Consider in Determining Whether You Really Have Control Over Spending

1. Do you have an approved, regular vendor for ordering new materials?
2. Do you have set budgets for sales and marketing materials and branded merchandise?
3. Do all employees receive approval for orders before they are placed?
4. Can you track every penny spent on marketing materials in a given year?

So, how did you do? If you found that you might not be aware of every purchase, money may be slipping through your fingers without your realizing it. But don’t worry; you’re definitely not alone!

A lot of larger companies struggle with this same issue of not knowing what’s being spent company-wide. Often, we grow so quickly, that we forget to track regular spending on orders for new sales forms, uniforms for new hires and marketing materials.

A centralized system, like an online company store program, can help you maintain control over all these seemingly small orders to ensure all dollars are accounted for.

Bulk Ordering Promotional Products Leads to Waste

We see it time and time again. Big companies spread across distance through traveling employees and multiple branch locations tend to purchase more than what’s immediately needed.

That’s because, whenever an employee or branch needs new materials, they source it themselves. Vendors almost always have minimum order requirements, which are rationalized through volume discounts. Your employees may think they are saving you money by ordering in bulk, but unless you have a central system for tracking that excess inventory, it will soon become waste.

When the order arrives, the immediately needed materials will be used as expected, but what about the 1,000 extra t-shirts or 2 extra boxes of contracts? Without a central system to alert the rest of the company about the inventory on hand, that excess often gets stuffed into a corner, filed away in an unused cupboard or may even be stored in an employee’s home or the truck of his car. The product eventually becomes waste because employees have no way to share the extra inventory between them.

The Online Company Store Centralized Solution

An online company store program is an eCommerce platform designed to make ordering marketing materials, sales materials and branded merchandise for multiple locations or remote employees painless.

These increasingly popular programs include the employee-facing and administrative software, outsourced consulting on product selection, design, and order management, and support services to manage the setup, ordering, and approval processes.

An online company store solution will help you regain control of your costs through a central system and program you can manage without having to leave your office.

What Are the Benefits of an Online Company Store Solution?

• Available Products. An online company store puts the control of available products in your hands to help you maintain consistency and quality. All your employees have to do is choose the size, color or quantity of the pre-approved product to order.
• Discounts. Many organizations purchase in volume to take advantage of discounts. An online company store solution provides centralized purchasing discounts for annual order volume rather than individual order volume.
• Permissions and Approvals. User-based permissions allow managers to control access and orders. Pre-select who can order and set approval rules to require manager review before an order processes.
• Budget Control. An online store solution will allow you to assign budgets at the individual and/or department level to help you control costs and avoid overspending.
• Everyone loves information. A central system will allow you to generate personalized reports to see exactly who is purchasing what across the organization.
• On-Demand Ordering. Ordering in volume is no longer necessary with the recent innovations in decoration methods. An on-demand online company store solution will allow you to buy in lower quantities. Many people refer to this solution as the “pay-as-you-go” model since you only buy what is needed immediately.
• Little to No Investment. An online company store solution completely eliminates the need for up front inventory investment. Save money, save space and eliminate waste.

Control Costs with an Online Company Store Program

An online company store solution will help you save money, better track your inventory and eliminate overspending and wasted, obsolete product. With little up front investment, it’s no wonder so many larger organizations are making the switch.

Keep in mind, an online company store is not the right solution for every organization. If your company is small to mid sized and/or you don’t purchase a lot of branded product, it may not be a good fit for you.

However, if you are a large organization and you do purchase branded materials often, an online company store can make a dramatic impact and help you control costs across your organization.

Schedule A Meeting Now to Learn More!