Ever struggled with managing employee apparel orders? One of our clients did, and we stepped in to help. We developed a tailored employee apparel order solution (complete with allowance tracking and reporting) that transformed their cumbersome process into a smooth, efficient system. Our user-friendly online order management portal was key to this success.
(It even won us a Brand Chain PEAK Award for “Best Technology Solution to a Client Problem”!) Here's the rundown of the challenge our customer was facing and the SOLV Solution that resulted in a big win for everyone!
Our client has always offered their employees a budget to spend on company apparel. They wanted to work with a local Idaho business to provide timely, personal service customized for their specific business needs rather than the out-of-state, one-size-fits-all employee order solution they had relied on in the past.
Their existing solution was working, to a degree. They were able to provide their employees company apparel. However, the process was creating significant additional work on the back end. Orders were bagged and labeled with the employee's name, but they weren't separated by location. This cost our client’s management and administrative team hours upon hours sorting through 1,000+ items, separating and shipping them to their four locations.
We discovered another critical issue in their employee allowance system. The company gave a certain allowance to each employee as a gift during each order cycle. However, their previous vendor did not provide tracking on how much of that allowance was used by each individual employee. This left the management and admin teams the task of wading through hundreds of employee orders to determine who spent money beyond their allowance in order to recoup the cost through payroll deduction.
As another point to consider, our customer had many non-English speaking employees, so having a site that was easy to use and navigate was critical for creating a positive user experience.
SOLV created a brand-new online employee order site for our client's employees. We created a unique user account for each employee, pre-loading the company-provided allowances, and collecting any overage immediately via credit card. This eliminated any need for our client to track the individual orders and collect additional funds through payroll deductions.
We designed the new employee order site to be intuitive and easy to navigate, and we provided a simple, visual instruction guide (with screen shots) for our client to share with employees. This helped relieve the stress of language barriers and reduced the need to spend time answering employee questions about how to order. Finally, we incorporated our own proven order processing and inventory management systems to handle the entire order, from sourcing to decorating to sorting and distribution for each of their four locations.
Our client saved numerous hours that had been spent manually sorting orders, tracking allowance usage, and setting up payroll deductions for their twice-a-year employee apparel orders. They also received fewer employee questions on how to place an order because of the easy-to-use interface. Our in-house e-Commerce team was there to quickly troubleshoot any problems that did arise. Employees were able to manage their orders and pay on the spot for anything over their allotted allowance, giving them a frustration-free experience and making their work day even more pleasant.