Gaining Seven New Multi-Million Dollar B2B Customers

Shapco, a Printing Impressions 400-listed large commercial printer, has been serving more than 40 years from the U.S. It specializes in premium-quality printing and mailing services, with its major focus on corporate clients and franchisee chains. Shapco has gained national recognition for winning more than 1,000 awards in its four decades of service.

Shapco lost one of its multi-million dollar accounts to its competitor, as they could not match the new ordering platform and process in their existing online Web-to-print (W2P). 

Challenges

The customer, a key corporate account, was an 800-restaurant chain, and was looking to simplify and automate the entire print ordering process, with a multiple order approval process, rule-based product personalization, and investment in a high-end secured system integrated with its existing ERP and databases.

Their biggest challenge was to create a demo store within two months, as the customer had agreed for a demo. While Shapco was managing the account for years, they had evolved multiple solutions to process the orders at the back-end. The challenge started, as now a customer wanted online ordering, which could be managed by their team, but needed a unique portal that would fit to their business and integrate it with their internal processes. 

Shapco’s existing W2P could not meet the customers’ needs. They evaluated and invested in multiple systems, but none had the complete flexibility to achieve the needed results, and they ultimately lost the client.

Research states that in the United States, 40% of print providers have more than one W2P system, and 15% have more than five to seven W2Ps.

Shapco still wanted to get the account back, as they came to know that their competitor’s platform was also struggling.

How the OnPrintShop team helped them

Shapco, in its search to find a solution, also evaluated radix software’s (Booth 12159) OnPrintShop’s B2B nConnect, and discussed its customers’ unique and complex needs.

A few of the key needs Shapco had were able to personalize the complex menu for multiple restaurants; run multiple marketing campaigns; be able to add new restaurants and help them with quick setup; manage single, large orders on behalf of all the franchisees, and ship it to multiple locations; partial payment from the head office and partial from the restaurant owners; specific reporting needs; and a lot more.

Before finalization, the OnPrintShop and Shapco team worked on specifications, personalized demos, and strategies as to how this could be achieved. Ultimately, a dedicated team from OnPrintShop and Shapco worked together round the clock to drive the project.

The OnPrintShop team started working side-by-side on multiple aspects:

• Customizing the base solution to meet the ordering flow
• Integrating the best of third party W2P tools, as they were very happy with the existing variable data template personalization tool, and needed a high-end 3D generator tool, and 
• Integrating third-party warehouse and MIS systems into the solution to process the orders.

Initially, a lot of features were hard coded to achieve the demo within the defined time. Ultimately, Shapco made a presentation, and the customer came up with a few more suggestions, which was positive  — they were still considering.

In the meantime, due to the flexibility of the OnPrintShop platform to customize for large corporate needs, Shapco approached a few accounts, which is inclusive of the Fortune 500 companies as well. They successfully added six more similar customers, fulfilling each one’s unique customization needs.