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Proforma Blog

Create A Flawless Ordering System For Company Promotional Items

By Proforma Durkee on May 11, 2018

New technology, and greater accessibility to a larger market, means that companies are expanding with both national and international footprints. As a result, many businesses have hundreds (if not thousands) of employees and offices spread all over the globe.

Outer offices have needs for branded materials and promotional products, but getting these items ordered and delivered rapidly can be challenging. Getting budget approval, shipping long distances, and minimum order requirements can be barriers that at best frustrate workers in these offices, or at worst cause them to “get creative” in finding ways around company policy and procedures. Every office soon develops its own individual processes, which makes branding, purchasing, spending, and vendor acquisition inconsistent at best.

An online store for company promotional items can create a flawless system with strong benefits for both the outer offices and the teams at HQ.

Flaw #1 : The Ordering Process is Cumbersome

An automated online ordering process means that fewer people are required to process an order. This can have all kinds of benefits for your organization. It will save you on labor costs by reducing the number of people involved in manual processes. It, therefore, automatically reduces the frequency of human error. And, because this is online, the store can be open 24 hours a day. Global offices can order during their business hours and in their native language.

Flaw #2 : Everyone Owns a Piece of the Puzzle

With an online company store, everything from your purchasing and order placement to invoicing and tracking can be integrated into a central system (at last!). Individual departments, such as marketing, sales, or finance, still own their approvals and processes, but reporting, inventory, and other historical data now resides in one system as a single source of truth. Individual rights can be applied to give access and restrict permissions to ensure that teams can see only what’s pertinent to their role.Online Company Store

Flaw #3 : Paying More For Less

When each office is negotiating contracts independently for just what their staff needs, you’re paying higher rates per unit. An online company store that’s responsible for all offices, can leverage a much larger order for better rates per piece, even factoring in shipping costs.

Flaw #4 : The Uncontrolled Evolution of Your Brand

The outer office staff of organization tend to be more entrepreneurial in spirit. The go-getter, problem-solving mindset that makes a remote office successful, often means that when confronted with frustration, they find creative ways around.

Often, they find it easier to ask forgiveness than permission when it comes to ordering company promotional items, and create their own vendor relationships. As noted earlier, this gets expensive, and it can also erode your brand when creative license is taken with the corporate logo, tagline, and colors.

An online company store locks in the items that can be purchased and the cost, as well as the branding to ensure that no matter where your staff are located, your branding is consistent.

Flaw #5 : Inventory Control and The Closet of Marketing Goodies

Every office in your company has a marketing closet - a small storage areas with a tiny inventory of branded merchandise and a lot of leftover one-offs (pink shirts in size XXS, one Koozie for last year’s golf tournament, and a random assortment of ink pens).

You can better manage your inventory if you know where everything is and order only what you need. An online store for company promotional items solves this age-old problem, by giving you complete visibility and control over your inventory. With low, negotiated rates, offices can order just the shirts they need instead of guessing what they might need to have on hand this year. And if they are low on pens in Sacramento, you can ship the excess from St. Louis.

Creating a Flawless System for Company Promo Items

When you work with Proforma Durkee to create your flawless ordering system, we don’t take a cookie-cutter approach. We work with you and all stakeholder departments to identify a system that addresses the universal flaws stated here, as well as solutions to fit your unique requirements.

Find out what happens next by downloading our free guide to online company store and choosing the right partner to develop yours. Or, just contact us for a consultation. We can’t wait to hear from you. 

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Topics: Online Company Store, Promotional Products

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