ORDERCLOUD CASE STUDIES FOR MANUFACTURERS AND DISTRIBUTORS

Table of Contents

Introduction 03Case StudiesBurroughs 04Staples 06Bremer Bank 09

9,000+ Active Applications Built on Four51’s OrderCloud Platform

B2B eCommerce is becoming pervasive. Nearly 75% of B2B buyers say buying from an e-commerce site is more convenient than buying from a sales rep, and 93% say they prefer buying online when they’ve already decided what to buy (Forrester). Despite this fact, only 25% of B2B companies today actively sell online (Forrester). Manufacturers and Distributors have an opportunity to eliminate order management costs associated with expensive sales reps and call centers, and improve efficiencies through eCommerce.

Businesses like yours are able to differentiate amongst competitors by creating a state-of-the-art ordering experience for their employees. Replace and update existing and legacy technology systems. Start using your call center staff for more value-adding sales roles, instead of as order takers. Create a modern ordering experience for employees that answers their demands for online ordering capabilities, is accessible through any type of device and available at any time of day.

Four51 offers a cloud-based B2B eCommerce platform called OrderCloud(TM), that allows you to eliminate costs and differentiate amongst competitors through industry specific solutions called Order Hubs. The OrderCloud platform is natively cloud-based and B2B focused with over 9,000 active applications. 17million active users worldwide rely on the OrderCloud architecture to place orders, and run their businesses better.

For Manufacturers and Distributors, the OrderCloud platform allows for applications like Storefront Order Hubs, Sales Rep Self-Service Order Hubs and Proposal Builder (CPQ) Order Hubs. This eBook will walk you through several examples of how enterprises like yours have utilized the platform.

Burroughs

COMPANY

Burroughs Payment Systems was looking for a solution to support worldwide sales of Burroughs image-processing technology through their network of resellers.

The new ordering process needed to be cost effective, easy to administer and use, and allow non-IT staff to manage products and purchasing rules.

Burroughs also needed the system to automatically recognize and apply unique pricing, purchasing and merchandising rules based on which reseller was viewing the catalog.

The solution needed to process orders for registered and walk-in customers, notify users of order status, and accept multiple payment methods. It also needed to integrate with other systems that managed accounting, manufacturing supply chain and inventory - while allowing for process scalability and failover.

Four51 created an OrderCloud solution for Burroughs delivering a web store containing more than 2,000 products that allowed for:

• Easy product management from multiple admin roles• Automatic ordering to provide discounts for recurring shipments• Cross Sell/Up Sell• Specialized pricing based on buyer sign on• Customized site messages based on buyer sign on

The OrderCloud platform was integrated with Burroughs middleware to reduce order processing costs and prevent administrative errors. Sales orders are now fed automatically from OrderCloud into the Burroughs ERP system. Shipment notifications from OrderCloud are also captured in real time and the back-end system is updated with applicable data. The project needed to be completed in less than a month and required the following integration components from the OrderCloud platform to deliver and receive information:

• SOAP Web Services• HTTP Request/Response Model Services• HTTP listener that would allow Four51 the ability to send real time orders• Web Services Administrator Interface to view and resend XML messages• Custom Message Processors to modify the XML to meet Burrough’s system

requirements

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

SOLUTION

BURROUGHS PAYMENT SYSTEMS SAVES HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS BY SIMPLIFYING ORDER PROCESSING

The OrderCloud solution dramatically reduced costs and provided an interface that multiple roles within the organization could quickly become comfortable with using. Burroughs’ migration to Four51 OrderCloud provided the opportunity to streamline business processes making the commerce system more efficient.

With OrderCloud, Burroughs is able to easily manage their products, inventory and ordering, saving them time, money and resources. Burroughs is also able to create custom buying experiences, provide real-time integration, and save hundreds of thousands of dollars per year through more efficient ordering processes.

Founded in 1886, Burroughs is a Plymouth, Mich. based global provider of document and payment processing image technology, cash-automation solutions and services to financial institutions and retailers. Its products provide banks and commercial customers with safe, secure and prompt document and cash processing that improves operational efficiencies and payment security. With more than 100 years of history, Burroughs is recognized as the industry leader in image-processing technology from web-enabled branch and merchant capture devices to high-speed reader/sorters in some of the largest payment-processing centers worldwide.

ABOUT BURROUGHS

photo courtesy of wikimedia.

RESULTS

Staples

COMPANY

Staples is a global company with retail and delivery businesses serving customers in over 25 countries. In addition to its 1,800 retail locations and online B2C sites that offer office supplies and office technology, Staples supports over 400 enterprise B2B Corporate Accounts through its SPS division. Each of these 400 unique corporate contract customers has a different brand and product set. In addition, each account requires its own procurement rules, user permissions, and corporate organizational hierarchies. The complexities of managing a single enterprise account, let alone 400 of them, is a massive operational challenge. Managing that challenge cost-effectively is yet another hurdle.

Staples knew that in order to keep these corporate customers happy and engaged, they needed to improve control over pricing, merchandising and service by streamlining the administration of their B2B platform and eliminating disparate supplier technologies from their customer-facing solution.

Staples chose to implement Four51’s OrderCloud platform to tackle the complexities of their customer requirements while helping them control the cost of service delivery. OrderCoud's multi-tenant, cloud-based architecture allows Staples to manage their entire B2B enterprise customer base from a single administrative interface, dramatically reducing customer set up and admin time. In addition, OrderCloud's API allows seamless integration into Staples back-end systems, driving additional automation to reduce both cost and errors. The Staples solution is comprised of:

• Over 400 uniquely branded customer experiences administered from one single administrative platform

• Individualized procurement processes uniquely defined for each organization's requirements

• Configurable permissions assigned at the company, group or user level allowing granular user experiences to be created within sites

• Shared product capability across sites to minimize administration and create fast, efficient client implementations

• OrderCloud's parallel and serial approval rules engine which allows the creation of infinite approval scenarios to quickly duplicate each client's existing procurement environment

• Order and shipping integration to Staples fulfillment systems via the OrderCloud API

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

SOLUTION

STAPLES DELIVERS OVER 400 UNIQUELY BRANDED B2B SITES THROUGH A SINGLE ADMIN INTERFACE ON ORDERCLOUD

OrderCloud allowed Staples to consolidate its customer-facing B2B solutions onto a single, integrated commerce platform. By taking advantage of OrderCloud's multi-tenant, cloud-based architecture and robust API, Staples achieved both implementation speed and cost-effective administration of its highly complex customer base. Staples is now receiving tens of thousands of fully automated monthly orders.

Staples makes it easy to make more happen with more products and more ways to shop. Through its world-class retail, online and delivery capabilities, Staples lets customers shop however and whenever they want, whether it’s in store, online or on mobile devices. Staples has been making it easy for businesses for 27 years with thousands of associates worldwide. Headquartered outside of Boston, Staples operates throughout North and South America, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. More information about Staples (Nasdaq: SPLS) is available at staples.com®.

ABOUT STAPLES

Flickr photo by Mike Mozart

RESULTS

www.four51.comTwitter: @four51incLinkedIn: Four51, Inc952-294-0451

400 1st Avenue N., Suite 200 Minneapolis, MN 55401

CONTAC T US

Bremer Bank

COMPANY

Bremer Bank is a privately owned, full-service banking, investment, wealth management, trust and insurance company based out of St. Paul, Minnesota. With nearly 2,000 employees and counting, they got to a point in their business’ growth story where they realized they had a process improvement opportunity.

Hundreds of marketing and sales sheets lived on multiple pages of a legacy company intranet platform that was difficult finding the correct sell sheet could be both challenging and time-consuming when you needed documents from multiple business lines, as they were all located on seperate intranet pages. Employees also needed access to a printer where they would print-on-demand the marketing materials on company template paper in order to get them in front of customers.

In addition, Bremer had maintained a separate system for proposal creation where Marketing employees could upload a limited number of sell sheets to it. Every time a sell sheet changed, they had to upload a new document to this proposal system and to the intranet. There was no option to preview what each document was – employees had to guess and hope it was the right one when the proposal was created, or go to the separate intranet site and open the document there to see what it was. Sometimes users needed to add additional documents to their proposal (ones that weren’t part of the marketing library) and there was no way to do that. Documents couldn’t be customized, creating a very disjointed experience for both employees and customers.

This presented several operational challenges.

As Bremer’s employees and customers started to become more and more mobile-centric with expectations around real-time business communication, the marketing team knew they needed a better, more flexible solution for employees, and one that didn’t require the high level of maintenace that their intranet system did. With the current system, materials that banking and financial reps needed to do business couldn’t be accessed out in the field, because they needed to be printed on the templated paper in order to pass brand standards. They also couldn’t be emailed, eliminating the preferred distribution method for most customers today.

Business Issue/Challenge

BREMER CREATES A CUSTOM PROPOSAL BUILDER APP WITH ORDERCLOUD

With Ordercloud, Bremer Bank was able to create a custom marketing and sales material library, and an easy-to-use proposal builder app for their employees. The site is accessible by retail and business bankers, trust officers, insurance agents and more. The functionality and flexibility allowed Bremer to create a robust marketing sell sheet system with a more modern user experience. The new OrderCloud platform allows users to:

• Search for documents using a menu or keyword, preview documents, download unbranded for printing on template paper, or download branded for emailing.

• Create custom proposals that include a customizable cover letter and can contain additional documents that they couldn’t previously attach. After creating the proposal, it can be saved in the system for later use or editing, or they can be sent to Bremer’s

in-house print shop for printing and binding if desired.

With OrderCloud, Bremer Bank anticipates a large increase in the number of employees creating proposals, and thus an increase in business. Employees have reported the new system is easy to use, provides a comprehensive view of marketing materials available, allows for quick turn-around on the distribution of proposals, and creates the perception that Bremer Bank is more customer-centric.

Solution

Results

Four51’s OrderCloud gave us the functionality and flexibility we needed to create a robust marketing sell sheet system that was easy to use across the entire company.”

-Lori T., Marketing Program Manager

“

Relationship building is critical in our business. Staying close to clients is a Bremer priority and developing trusted partnerships is one of our strengths. In both good times and bad, we listen to clients, learn of their needs and identify individual solutions that transform a world of possibilities into financial realities. We make decisions locally, while offering products and services with a global reach to help clients succeed. Bremer is only as financially healthy as the clients we serve. That drives us to meet clients’ specific needs and do everything we can to enhance their financial health. Ultimately, if our clients are successful, Bremer is successful.

Bremer at-a-glanceServices: Full-service banking, investment, wealth management, trust and insuranceClients: Individuals and families, large and mid-sized corporations, small businesses, agribusinesses, nonprofits, public and government entitiesLocations: Offices throughout Minnesota, North Dakota and Wisconsin. Thousands of MoneyPass® ATMs nationwide and online and mobile banking anywhere, anytimeHeadquarters: Saint Paul, MinnesotaOwnership: Privately owned by the Otto Bremer Foundation and Bremer employeesEmployees: Nearly 2,000

www.bremer.com

About Bremer Bank