The client is a leading manufacturer of tools, woodworking and metal processing products. They sell through a broad network of distributors and retailers.
Product literature is an essential part of their sales process. In all, they have over 100 different catalogs and data sheets.
Before coming to MarketSense, the client had literature stored at six regional service centers throughout the United States. Each center received an allocation of literature when an item was reprinted, which was sent to them directly from the printer.
Distributors and retailers then ordered literature from their local center. With no centralized solution in place, each center developed their own inventory management and fulfillment systems/procedures, all of which fell short of expectations. Due to the unreliability of these processes, salespeople would enter multiple requests for the same item, order significantly more than they needed, and engage in other literature hoarding practices.
Because of uneven usage across the six centers, there were frequently situations where one center would be out-of-stock of an item whereas another had plenty, requiring cross-center communications and shipments.
Out-of-stock situations were further exacerbated because the centralized marketing department had no way to easily determine corporate-wide inventory levels. With no early warning system in place, the client could find itself completely out of a critical catalog for months while it was updated and reprinted.
Other problems included an error-prone, labor-intensive literature ordering process, frequent shipments of obsolete catalogs, and difficulties coordinating with the company responsible for the on-demand printing of price sheets. Of course, all of this created a significant amount of ill-will and enormous amounts of time spent tracking down whether orders had been placed, whether stock was available, etc. In fact, literature fulfillment was voted the number one problem needing to be addressed by the client’s sales team.
MarketSense worked with the client to outsource their entire literature fulfillment process. Literature inventories were all centralized at our Sales Support Center where they were entered into our Inventory Management system. This system includes built-in processes such as low inventory level notification and usage reports.
Distributors and retailers were then instructed to place orders through our shopping-cart oriented web form that includes images of each literature item and selection tools that let you narrow down the types of literature items you want to see by product group, literature type, etc.
Our Web Team also created a customized solution so that price sheets could be ordered though the same web form, but then redirected to the client’s on-demand printer.
With this system in place, distributors and retailers enter their own orders, taking this burden off the regional service center admin staff. In addition, all hoarding issues have stopped because 1) They can rely on MarketSense to same day ship orders placed by noon central time, and 2) They receive a follow-up email including the FedEx tracking number so they can monitor the shipment themselves.
The system has also eliminated out-of-stock situations and given managers the tools to more closely manage their inventory levels and usage. It also freed up valuable warehouse space in the centers that can now be used for shipping product.
