Client Success Story: Stampin' Up!

Integrated Enterprise System

The Company

Stampin' Up! is a 15-year-old direct-sales company that offers an exclusive line of decorative stamp sets and accessories for home decor, greeting cards, craft projects, and scrap booking. The company's size and steady growth reflect the nationwide passion for decorative rubber stamping.

Founded in 1988, the company now employs more than 400 employees. Stampin' Up! introduces more than 100 new stamp sets and accessories annually in its full-color Idea Book & Catalog, now more than 250 pages.

Stampin' Up! products may be purchased at home workshops through a network of independent sales distributors. Currently, there are almost 30,000 distributors from all 50 U.S. states and Canada who teach the art of stamping.

Stampin' Up! operates three state-of-the-art facilities, including a 40,000-square-foot manufacturing facility; an 110,000-square-foot distribution and warehouse center; and a 40,000-square-foot corporate office and demonstrator support call center.

The Challenge

Spring2 Technologies was asked to develop an enterprise wide e-Commerce system for Stampin' Up! for its 30,000 independent distributors. The system had to be capable of processing 50,000 to 100,000 transactions daily and tie all operational functions together including order entry, order fulfillment, commission processing, inventory management, and financials. The system had to be capable of handling multiple order types and allow distributors to quickly ÒbuildÓ orders from multiple customers over the Internet.

The Solution

Spring2 Technologies developed an e-Commerce system that tied Internet based order placement and fulfillment with customer maintenance, customer care, commission processing, order fulfillment, and financial systems integration.

Distributors can now place orders from any location at any time in an easy to use web interface; real-time payment processing facilitates efficient order completion. In addition to placing orders, distributors can save orders "open" while waiting for final order detail from customers. Customer information is gathered which allows highly targeted marketing and automatic e-mail notification alerts distributors when the order has been received and shipped. At any time distributors can check the status of their orders from "received", to "in-picking", to "shipped", and even check backordered item status over the Internet. The system allows complete drill-down capabilities from a macro multi-month order views to specific order detail, to specific item status, and even UPS tracking detail right up to delivery at the door.

The system also allows distributors to communicate with each other, gather important manufacturer information, and have up-to-the-minute access to important business information.

The Technologies

• True n-tier client server architecture.
• Front-end application developed using Microsoft web technologies.
• Mid-tier components developed using the COM architecture, C++, and most recently .NET and C#.
• Microsoft Solomon financial accounting system.
• Multiple SQL Server 2000 database engines configured in a cluster.
• Internet platform uses Microsoft Internet Information Server.
• Communications provided through Exchange Server 2003.
• The network consists of multiple Windows NT 2003 systems, 100-MB backbone and T1 lines for remote connectivity.
• SSL security.

The Results

• Over 90% of all orders taken over the Internet resulting in faster than expected ROI.
• Labor intensive fax entry has been eliminated.
• Call-center phone orders have decreased 70%.
• Estimated order processing time saved is greater than 350 hours per week.
• Higher customer satisfaction as orders can be placed at any time of the day; distributors have much more "control" over their business and order process.
• Distributors report high satisfaction with on-line reporting for their own orders and their customer order trends.
• Manual and paper based processes have been eliminated.