Tristar Products organizes reporting, reduces emails by 50% and enables efficient e-commerce updates with SharePoint and KWizCom Professional Services
Summary
Tristar Products Inc is an international infomercial market leader. Its business demands the management of multiple projects and the associated
contracts simultaneously. In 2009, the company decided that these complexities could be better managed using a SharePoint platform. According to Adam Levy, Project Manager at Tristar, “KWizCom’s Professional Services have helped us come a long way in a relatively short period with our SharePoint. Everyone in the company in the uses it now, including customer service, sales, marketing. Primarily, we are now able to manage our contracts, which are the cornerstone of our business, in a far more efficient manner than ever before.” Support for key processes is now on the SharePoint platform at Tristar. These include management of day-to-day tasks as well as the company’s many document libraries, reports and updates for product offers and pricing.
About Tristar Products Inc.
With over a billion dollars in sales, Tristar Products Inc. is the recognized pioneer of taking innovative ideas and turning them into branded worldwide distributed products. Dedication to high standards of quality manufacturing makes Tristar Products an internationally respected infomercial market leader. With unparalleled success in selling small household appliances like Juicers and Blenders, fitness equipment, and health and beauty products, Tristar Products is constantly being sought to form alliances with inventers and celebrities. Some recognized celebrity endorsed brands include Jack LaLanne, Montel Williams and Joan Rivers, to name just a few.
The Situation
Tristar is managing approximately 10 new contracts every week to support its business. These were being handled in various email boxes around the company, with each person saving them in a different way. Also, with 20 different shopping web sites, Tristar changes offers and price points constantly to maximize its sales opportunities. Finally, the company has approximately 50 key reports that were also being managed via email.
The Problem
Managing the company’s contracts in multiple email boxes was a source of confusion, and potentially missed opportunities. Various people were saving these in a variety of formats, and there was no one single, master version that was available for everyone. With regard to the e-commerce sites, every time a change was made to any product on any of those sites, the web master had to manually provide updates to the appropriate resources, or someone would have to process a mock order to see the new offer and/or price, adding additional stress to the system. As well, these test orders had to be processed too, even though there was no actual purchase involved.
And finally, Excel reports were also being managed in email with a similar result to that of the contracts: it was difficult to know where the latest, truest version of any report could be found.
The Solution
After initially trying on its own and with some other consultants, Tristar turned to KWizCom for some guidance in helping set up the repositories and workflows. For the contracts, Tristar now has a library called ‘Completed Contracts’ that Adam manages. Once an executed contract is received, he
uploads it there and the appropriate resources receive an alert. For the e-commerce sites, a dedicated library is now available to all that stores complete live shopping pages, with all the latest offers and pricing, sorted by product. Finally, those Excel reports that were so hard to manage in email now have their own library as well.
The Benefits
By managing the contracts in SharePoint, Tristar has seen a major benefit that many companies would love to realize: a significant reduction in email traffic. “This has cut down on our emails by about half,” finds Adam, “not to mention that we no longer do we have to deal with eight different people saving these in eight different ways. With the next phase of our SharePoint intend to continue to reduce the email traffic – my target is in the 75%-80% range.” Also, with web updates from the multiple shopping sites now available automatically, the web master is not inundated with requests for copies of pages, and dummy orders are not clogging the system.
“We used to drive our web master crazy,” Adam says, “or we had to process these dummy orders just so people could see the latest pricing and offers. Now our people just look up the product they need in SharePoint to see if there are any updates.” The reports too are easily accessed and maintained in a SharePoint library, rather than in email, and a single version of each is available to everyone who needs them. “With KWizCom’s help, we have been able to save a tremendous amount of our people’s time, become more organized and productive, and of course be more responsive to our markets,” concludes Adam, “We have begun with these baby steps and will continue to look to KWizCom for services, support and products as we grow and prosper.”
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