sales tell you who you work for,
gross profit tells you who works
for you, but net profit tells you
what works—period.”
John Campbell, director of
corporate solutions for distribu-
tor HALO Branded Solutions in
Sterling, Illinois, says his firm’s
clients are most often looking for
stores that can fulfill B2B
requests for employee giveaways,
clients and trade shows, personal
purchases by employees, and
awards and incentives for
employees or sales teams.
TECHNICALLY SPEAKING
Distributors who do offer
company store opportunities to
clients are most likely going to
either manage back-end opera-
tions themselves, or work with
providers that specialize in set-
ting up and managing company
stores on their behalf.
“Our most complicated
stores have many hundreds of
hours of development time into
them and are continually evolv-
ing as the needs of our more
demanding clients warrant. In
terms of maintenance, your day-
to-day operations may include
catalog management, order pro-
cessing, user management and
spending account management,”
says Eric Granata, ecommerce
director at ROBYN. “There are
ways to automate or simplify
each of these tasks, which will
depend on what ecommerce
platform your store is built on.”
Campbell says his company’s
clients often want to know if
PCI compliance for processing
credit card payments is available,
and what costs are associated
with website development and
hosting, and fulfillment services.
Distributors, therefore, should at
least understand how to integrate
with a client’s procurement sys-
tem to maximize single-sign-on
and punch-out shopping cart
capabilities.
Many clients don’t speak to
Granata’s team in technical
terms; rather, they share pain
points and ask ROBYN staff to
educate them on a solution. “For
this reason we spend a lot of
time educating the client and
managing their expectations
before we begin the building
process.
“For the distributor, a basic
understanding of HTML, CSS
and JS, while helpful, is not nec-
essary if you are using one of the
many company store solutions on
the market,” he adds. “Many
technology providers will provide
custom development and inte-
gration services as well. If you’re
after larger and more complex
programs, then you want some-
one on your team with more
technical prowess.”
TAKE OWNERSHIP
When it comes to deciding
who will shoulder the responsi-
24 •
PPB
• JULY 2016
INNOVATE
BUILDING A
SUCCESSFUL
COMPANY
STORE
Does your client want a company store?
Start by asking these questions:
• What products or types of products do they want?
• What minimums will be listed?
• Will individuals be placing orders or will one person
be ordering for everyone?
• Will items be shipped to a set business address or
individual addresses?
• What payment methods will be used?
• How quickly will the customer expect to receive the
product after placing an order?
• Will the customer require a specific domain name for
the store?
• What are the customer’s expectations for order
volume?
Complex, custom company stores may
include several or all of these elements:
• Custom site design
• Complicated products with many variants
• Variable data print products
• Approval rules
• Spending accounts and promotions
• Third-party software integrations
• Digital asset management
• Dynamic imaging and document creation
• User groups
• Custom order workflows