Customized Print Marketing Materials on Demand
The Challenge
A rapidly growing physician-led vein center found they needed professional printing services to produce print and marketing materials. At the time, they relied on the various locations to fax their print orders monthly which caused delays that spanned weeks. The ordering process lacked timeliness and transparency. As a result, the locations ended up placing multiple orders for the same item, thinking their previous requests had not been received. This inefficient process also made reporting inaccurate, impacting version control, budgets, and spending by location.
The Solution
Alcom built a custom online ordering portal to bring efficiency and transparency to the center’s printing needs. First, we identified items that could be used universally across locations and kept in inventory to help reduce the number of monthly orders. We then created templates and housed them in the online portal so marketing materials could be customized to an individual or location and printed on demand.
This included:
Brochures
Doctor Bios
Referral Notepads
Appointment/Business Cards
Calendars
Signs
Promotional Materials
Flyers
Through the online portal, each location and region was assigned a quarterly spending account that included an approval process, allowing regional managers to approve and track what was being ordered. To further help increase efficiency, shipping was integrated with UPS tracking with locations receiving timely emails regarding the status of their order. Finally, we set up custom reporting that showed the spend by location and region and predicted when materials would need to be reordered (including the universal static inventory) so that costs could be better estimated.
The Results
Today with 115+ locations and growing, the Center for Vein Restoration is now able to efficiently customize its print marketing materials on demand and ensure their materials are consistent, accurate, and efficiently tracked internally.