Varsity Logistics Helps Hit Promotions Raise the Bar for Customer Service in the Promotional Products Industry |
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Company Background
A leader in the Promotional Products Industry for over 50 years, Hit Promotional Products is ranked among the top 50 suppliers in the nation. They take great pride in receiving numerous awards ranging from Counselor's 'Top 20 Supplier' to 'Supplier of the Year' and 'Top Customer Service' honors from many of their distributors and industry associations, and strive to continue to be worthy of these awards. (www.hitpromo.net)
Business Goals
Known as 'Your One Stop Shop for Promotional Products', their focus has always been, and will continue to be, on offering great customer service, competitive pricing and a wide range of products.
Challenges
Hit Promotional Products is always looking to provide the best possible customer service, and in doing so, identified that their shipping environment was hindering their ability to ship as efficiently as possible. Their multiple shipping stations were not centralized from a "systems and information" perspective. Visibility to the shipping data, including rates, weights, etc., was limited to those only at the shipping stations.
Also, Hit Promotional Products wanted the ability to give their customers LTL quotes without involving the shipping department, and extend that functionality to their website.
Solution Requirements
To accommodate their infrastructure requirements, Hit Promotions needed for the solution to reside directly on the IBM System i server, making the shipping information available in real time to all users in the organization, not just those in the shipping department. With a team coordinated by Eric Shonebarger, IT Director for Hit Promotions, and Gary Meadow, CFO, they proceeded to identify and define their key functional requirements, taking into consideration how to work within the current IBM platform infrastructure.
"Hit's products are often rush shipped to trade shows, conventions, etc. so it was important for the solution to also have the ability to support multiple carriers, as well as multiple carrier services including overnight, next day, etc," states Gary.
Selection Process
Once the solution requirements were clearly defined, Gary and Eric reached out to their ERP vendor, Friedman Corporation, to see if they knew of an enterprise TMS solution that would fit their shipping needs, and be able to run natively on the IBM System i platform. Coincidentally, Friedman runs educational "lunch and learn" sessions for their customers to learn more about various additional functionality for their Friedman Frontier ERP software, and were about to feature one for a Transportation Management Solution.
Eric explains, "The fact that Friedman was already working with a Transportation Solution provider was important to us and certainly helped with the selection process." The Varsity Logistics TMS solution and the Friedman Frontier ERP solution collectively addressed all of the company's requirements with little need for customization because the interface between both solutions was already developed, tested and proven in the field.
Implementation
The Varsity Logistics professional services team, along with the Hit Promotional Products' team, planned and executed a full solution implementation within 90 days of the start of the project. With a project plan in place, all members of the implementation team worked together to meet deadlines and keep the project on track.
Roberto Ansaloni, Varsity Logistics' Director of Professional Services, states, "The project went smoothly and our solution went in successfully due in part to the fact that Hit Promotional Products had a very strong technical staff, were disciplined and focused on bringing the project in on time and under budget.
Results and Benefits
Hit Promotional Products continues to provide some of the best customer service in the promotional products industry and the Varsity Logistic Shipping Solution is a big part of their ability to service their accounts.
Gary adds, "We now have the ability to get real-time LTL quotes from the system, and make that information available to the entire organization, including the sales team."
In addition, Hit Promotions has the ability to accurately quote shipments on their website, which is tantamount to their growth and success. The shipping operation has been streamlined and because of the Varsity solutions capabilities, they can now identify, down to the penny, their shipping costs.
Varsity Logistics has equipped Hit Promotions to run an efficient shipping operation with easy access to all of the shipping data it needs for the entire organization, and once again raise the bar for customer service in the promotional products industry.
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