Gone are the days of paper order forms and offices piled high with excess inventory.
Today, online company store programs are growing in popularity as they ease ordering uniforms, marketing materials and sales collateral all from a centralized purchasing system. But what kinds of companies benefit from an online company store?
Organizations Who Rely on Printed Materials Like Contracts Would be Lost Without An Online Company Store
In this digital world, we often forget that many businesses still rely on printed materials for daily operations. However, there are still many businesses in the equipment rental space as well as countless others that complete sales contracts on the spot that absolutely rely on printed materials.
Larger organization whose sales and operations depend on certain sales and operational support materials should absolutely consider an online company store to simplify the ordering process, reduce turn-around time and ensure consistency across all product lines.
10 Things You Should Know Before Planning an Online Company Store
When setting up a new online company store, organizations choose products they order often and verify logo, artwork and decoration method. After materials have been approved once, they are available for reorder anytime from your online company store.
An online company store promises that your corporate uniforms will always be decorated on-brand and contracts will always be formatted correctly because each order is simply a reorder of previously approved materials.
Companies With Multiple Locations or Remote Employees Find an Online Company Store Invaluable
When organizations grow and spread out, it becomes increasingly difficult to transfer materials from one office to another. Excess materials are often shoved in an unused office or a hidden cabinet, never to be found again.
Some continually over-order to meet order minimums and qualify for volume discounts. This results in materials going to waste, costing the organization more than what’s saved.
An online company store program allows individual locations and remote employees to order just what’s needed immediately at their location.
Our programs offer discounts based on annual spend rather than individual order size, which represents further savings.
Another benefit is that materials are ordered and delivered to the ordering branch automatically rather than relying on a central office to distribute materials.
Moving to an online company store frees up the time of employees who were previously responsible for ordering and distributing materials. They have been able to redirect talents to more productive pursuits like growing an area of their organization and increasing efficiency.
Companies Who Attend or Host Several Events a Year Benefit From an Online Company Store
Companies that attend regular trade shows or host conferences go through more sales collateral, promotional merchandise and marketing materials than most. Whether you use the same materials at each event, or the materials vary by audience or location, an online company store can promise you’re never without materials no matter where you go.
Nothing is more embarrassing than attending a conference without sales materials because they just didn’t make it in time. Even worse, have you ever been forced to take old materials you’ve manually changed prices and contact information on just to have something to leave behind? Nothing says unprofessional quite like being unprepared for your own event.
An online company store is a lifesaver for organizations that attend events on a regular basis. With an online company store, it is easy to reorder pre-approved materials from any smart phone, tablet or computer in as little as 5 minutes.
Because materials can be ordered in small quantities and delivered to any address, sales people can order just what’s needed for an event and have it delivered right to the event location. Finally, no more toting around extra suitcases full of sales brochures!
Case Study: Customized Sales Kits Lead to Increased Sales, But At What Cost?
We have a client that provides beautiful sales kits for their individual branch locations and traveling sales people.
Each quarter, the company adjusts the sales kit to reflect company changes, new promotions and industry trends. While the kits change, they usually contain a variety of printed materials based on roles, some promotional products and a few pieces of company branded apparel. Most times there are several versions of the kit available and it is incredibly important that the right kit reach the right employee in the right location for their program to be successful.
The company had an internal team who was responsible for choosing and ordering all of the products, (often from a few different vendors) staging the kits and shipping them out to the right place at the right time. Because the team was constantly overwhelmed with just the responsibility of getting these kits together, other marketing initiatives fell by the wayside.
Switching to an Online Company Store Saved the Organization Over $10,000 Annually
The client came to us with their unique situation, hoping for a solution to streamline their sales kits. Together, we discussed their kits and the materials they’ve included over the years. We even found some new product categories to add over time to keep their kits fresh.
Their new online company store contains a list of all their sales kits each quarter where employees and partners can go and order what they need. Now employees are empowered to order the kits they need, when they need them, and the marketing team is no longer responsible for manually arranging each kit.
Each quarter, the client communicates the contents of the new sales kit to their Proforma SI Client Success Team. Our team then arranges the kits accordingly and makes them available on the online company store. The company has now completely outsourced their sales kits to us and it’s made a HUGE difference on their operations and bottom line.
The company still sees increasingly high sales numbers, excellent customer satisfaction rates and they’ve been able to redirect their marketing team back to marketing tasks to further grow the business. Additionally, the client has saved thousands, not only in employee time, but also in the price of the materials in each kit.
So, Is Your Company the Kind that Would Benefit From an Online Company Store?
Now think about your organization for a minute. What types of materials do you order? How often do you place new orders? Do you attend and/or host events? How many locations do you have?
An online store really addresses and solves countless problems around ordering marketing and sales materials for larger organizations with multiple locations. Employees and partners are now empowered to get for themselves what they need, when they need it.
Gone are the days of stockrooms piled high with mountains of inventory and marketing teams scrambling to distribute everything in a timely manner. An online company store will simplify your system, freeing up valuable time and space for more profitable endeavors.
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