Case Study: Professional Plastics
Professional Plastics is an award-winning distributor of engineering plastics for such industries as semiconductor and aerospace, where exact requirements are expected and timely delivery is a must. Their previous website consisted of outdated company information and minimal product information, with no commerce capability. With increasing growth in both the U.S. and international markets, Professional Plastics realized in 2003 it was time to develop a true eBusiness and eCommerce capability.
"Prior to working with the San Diego Media team, we had not considered eCommerce a viable business model in our industry" said Chris Kietzke of Professional Plastics, "Through the discovery and development phases, we soon realized that the MaxEXP® platform had features and benefits that could impact our business on many levels."
The Challenge
Plastics can be bought in a variety of thicknesses, sizes, and types causing pricing to be difficult to determine. The volatile price of oil for petroleum based plastic products added to this problem. For these reasons the Professional Plastics call center's past business process was to calculate these costs manually, which was time-consuming, inconsistent, and slowed down productivity. Professional Plastics needed a solution that could enable eCommerce, but also improve their current process of calculating orders.
The MaxEXP Solution
Leveraging the MaxEXP® platform, San Diego Media customized a solution that made eCommerce possible for Professional Plastics, but also drastically improved their internal business processes.
Increasing Revenue with Product Calculators:Taking the standard product manager and shopping cart features in MaxEXP®, San Diego Media developed custom product calculators that allow Professional Plastics' customers to easily and quickly configure their order. From quantity and price discounts, to specific cut-to-size configurators, these intuitive customer service tools have given Professional Plastics' customers the power to complete complex orders online.
Decreasing Costs and Improving Customer Service with a Web-based Order Desk:Utilizing the existing functionality within the MaxEXP® and the new calculator system, San Diego Media developed and deployed a web-based Order Desk to aid Professional Plastics' call center in quote and order development. The Order Desk pulls inventory data from 12 different branches around the country enabling employees to see which plastics are in stock at any given branch. The order can then easily be routed to the branch best suited to fulfill that order.
The Order Desk also features a customer lookup. Customers that have previously made purchases through the call center or the web site are automatically in the system. Professional Plastics can look up their account and order new products without having to reenter the customer's basic contact information, saving the employee valuable time. Phone orders can now be completed within a fraction of the previous process time significantly reducing costs for the company.
The Result:
Deployed in July of 2004, the new Professional Plastics site functions as an ever-growing commerce and content engine for both its international clientele and its internal sales team minimizing pricing errors, reducing costs and improving customer service.
With a rapidly growing online commerce channel and the fully integrated Order Desk that saves time and resource costs, Professional Plastics is now realizing the benefits of a complete eBusiness system.
Leveraging MaxEXP®'s open standards modular based architecture Professional Plastics was able to get a customized eBusiness solution, spearheading their company as the industry leader in the online marketplace.
Chris Kietzke of Professional Plastics:
"San Diego Media used the MaxEXP® platform to develop an "Order Desk" tool that allows our salespeople to effectively manage and market our diverse product lines through the use of custom-built quote calculation tools. These tools give our salespeople a distinct advantage in the marketplace by organizing a massive amount of data and integrating it into an easy to use tool.
Our salespeople can now quickly and accurately provide price quotations and order fulfillment via an automated process. In addition to faster, more accurate quotes, we are replacing a paper-driven filing system with an electronic filing system that is much more efficient and easier to track. From a management standpoint, it has allowed us to develop standardized pricing rules that our salespeople can follow and we can control. This has resulted in more consistent pricing and better sales margins when compared to manually generated price quotations. We look forward to working with San Diego Media on future projects to squeeze efficiencies from our business that we didn't think were possible."
