We did it again! We're honored to announce that we won another PSDA PEAK Award – this time for “Best Technology Solution to a Client Problem”! How did we do it? Well, we created an employee apparel order solution using our expertise in project management, e-Commerce, warehousing and fulfillment to save our customer time and resources. Here is the breakdown of the challenge our customer was facing and the SOLV Solution that resulted in a positive customer experience.
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 timelier, personal service customized for their specific business needs rather than the out-of-state, one-size-fits-all solution they had relied on in the past. Their existing solution was working, in the sense that 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 by employee, but not 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. In addition, our customer had many non-English speaking employees at some locations, 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 order management portal that our customer’s employees could use to order their company apparel. We created a unique user account for each employee, which enabled us to pre-load the company-provided allowances, and any overage was collected immediately via credit card. This eliminated any need for our customer to track the individual orders and collect additional funds through payroll deductions.
The site was designed to be intuitive and easy to navigate, and we provided a simple, visual instruction guide (with screen shots) for our customer to share with employees, relieving the stress of language barriers and reducing 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 customer 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, with our in-house e-Commerce team quickly troubleshooting 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.
We're taking 12 new clients on this journey in 2021. Contact us to see if your company is a good fit to be one of them - just email ecommerce@thesolvgroup.com or call 208.342.3676 to get the conversation started.