Quality Sales Materials on the Fly
February 2006
Thompson West reveals details behind its new online collateral-ordering system where sales reps can customize, get estimates and order sales promotions from their desktops.
Thomson West is a leading provider of integrated information solutions to the U.S. legal market, selling legal books and online services to law students, lawyers, and law librarians. It has 2,000 sales representatives, tasked with promoting the company brand and selling a wide range of legal products.
As in any company, each sales representative relies on marketing material to help him achieve his sales goals. These materials can include: direct mail, product collateral, and event invitations and signage that is customized for their target audiences and product lines.
Traditionally, the sales representatives would work with Thompson West's creative services department to create marketing pieces that were manually tweaked and customized. Consequently, the creative services team spent a great deal of time managing the creation of different marketing materials to meet the changing needs of each of the 2,000 sales representatives.
This system was obviously time-consuming and expensive. The creative services team was spending too much time tweaking existing materials and not creating new design projects. The sales representatives felt challenged because they were not able to respond quickly to competitive marketing efforts.
While looking for solutions to these problems, the creative services department faced an additional challenge. The internal IT department said it would be a two-year wait before they could provide the technical resources needed to develop an online collateral system. The creative services department's goal, however, was to get a system launched much faster in order to free up the staff to work on more design-intensive projects.
THE SOLUTION
The department turned its search for solutions outside the company. It decided to invest in Pageflex Storefront, a turnkey Web-to-print application for collateral management, document customization and digital printing and e-commerce. Using Storefront, the staff was able to launch an initial pilot program in less than three weeks without any formal training on the application.
"Unlike most online literature management systems, which can be cumbersome and technically challenging, Storefront has been simple to implement and very effective," says Arlene Berensen, technology lead at Thomson West. "It took us just one day to get up and running—and that was without training."
Once the system was in place, the Thomson West creative services department began offering sales representatives online collateral customization and ordering services. To streamline operations further, they developed unique portal sites to serve sales representatives from different divisions of the company. For instance, the Westlaw Academic Collateral Store enables sales representatives to customize collateral for specific promotional events and sales opportunities that target law students.
Thomson West is a leading provider of integrated information solutions to the U.S. legal market, selling legal books and online services to law students, lawyers, and law librarians. It has 2,000 sales representatives, tasked with promoting the company brand and selling a wide range of legal products.
As in any company, each sales representative relies on marketing material to help him achieve his sales goals. These materials can include: direct mail, product collateral, and event invitations and signage that is customized for their target audiences and product lines.
Traditionally, the sales representatives would work with Thompson West's creative services department to create marketing pieces that were manually tweaked and customized. Consequently, the creative services team spent a great deal of time managing the creation of different marketing materials to meet the changing needs of each of the 2,000 sales representatives.
This system was obviously time-consuming and expensive. The creative services team was spending too much time tweaking existing materials and not creating new design projects. The sales representatives felt challenged because they were not able to respond quickly to competitive marketing efforts.
While looking for solutions to these problems, the creative services department faced an additional challenge. The internal IT department said it would be a two-year wait before they could provide the technical resources needed to develop an online collateral system. The creative services department's goal, however, was to get a system launched much faster in order to free up the staff to work on more design-intensive projects.
THE SOLUTION
The department turned its search for solutions outside the company. It decided to invest in Pageflex Storefront, a turnkey Web-to-print application for collateral management, document customization and digital printing and e-commerce. Using Storefront, the staff was able to launch an initial pilot program in less than three weeks without any formal training on the application.
"Unlike most online literature management systems, which can be cumbersome and technically challenging, Storefront has been simple to implement and very effective," says Arlene Berensen, technology lead at Thomson West. "It took us just one day to get up and running—and that was without training."
Once the system was in place, the Thomson West creative services department began offering sales representatives online collateral customization and ordering services. To streamline operations further, they developed unique portal sites to serve sales representatives from different divisions of the company. For instance, the Westlaw Academic Collateral Store enables sales representatives to customize collateral for specific promotional events and sales opportunities that target law students.
Companies Mentioned:
 |
|
|
|||
|
|
