Storage & Fulfilment

All brochure request activity was handled on site at our clients offices, the activity is extensive and is one of their key drivers in converting sales.

The Challenge

• Handling the requests in-house for our client became largely labor intensive due to the manual nature of the process
• The storage of the brochures had been a long standing issue as it required additional temporary units on their site to hold the stock
• Stock control was becoming an issue as no live reporting on brochure stock volumes, resulting in frequently running out of brochures in stock
• Turn around times from brochure request to landing on doormats was extended due to volume and limited resource
• The postage cost needed to be reviewed as becoming expensive due to pack weights

Our Approach

We listened to the problem presented by our client and immediately knew that we could provide a complete solution.

The IT part

Using our in house IT development team we created a bespoke software solution for the brochure request project. The “Hub” provides real time information with regards to stock levels and order activity. Alerts are sent out once stock reaches a certain level, this then triggers either a re-print or a change in the marketing activity to reduce brochure request activity on specific brochures.

Working with our client’s own IT Team we have continued to add functionality to the Hub in order to provide additional reports and information which has enabled the client to refine their brochure request activity.

The Storage part

Making use of our extensive storage facilities we started to divert all brochure deliveries to our warehouse and arranged collection of stock from the client. Each brochure has been assigned a specific SKU code and booked into the warehouse with accurate counts.

The Fulfilment and Postage part

To enable a swifter enclosing process and increase brand awareness we switched to printed paperwrap, producing various versions to cover all brands. Previously the packs were enclosed by hand into non-branded envelopes.

Using our in house mailing facilities we created a twice weekly release pattern of brochure request mailings and using our own postage solution packs are being sent out on a 2-3 day service. This has reduced the turn around time from receipt of request to doormat and through automation has made the process a much smoother one.

Conclusion

Through listening and understanding the problem our client needed to solve we were able to create a bespoke package utilizing all of our in house knowledge from IT support, administration, production and postage. The brochure request activity has been running with us now since July of this year and is proving a huge success. Our client is free to concentrate on their core activities and the system has allowed them to investigate other innovative ways to deliver content to their client base.

The system we have built and have in place will continue to develop and we are already talking to our client about email activity and possible online offerings to sit alongside brochure request activity.