Essent Webinars: EssentOne Surveys: Simplifying the Complex for Efficient Orders

EssentOne Product Configuration Surveys simplify the complex. You get Well-Formed Orders -- complete, accurate, hassle-free and ready for efficient processing.

Watch the Essent Survey Webinar

Slide 1: EssentOne™ Surveys: Simplifying the Complex to Generate Well-Formed Orders™

Hello and welcome to the latest webinar from Essent. Today we’re going to show you how EssentOne simplifies the complexities of the promotional products industry with a series of simple questions that result in complete, accurate, hassle-free orders.

Slide 2: Moderator: Douglas B. Brill

My name is Doug Brill. I’m the Essent marketing coordinator and I specialize in the promotional products industry. I’m also your moderator today.

Slide 3: About Essent

Before we begin, a very brief overview of Essent. Essent is the leader in providing Comprehensive business management solutions since 1981 Essent has been serving Distributors, Decorators, and Suppliers in the promotional products industry since the year 2000 $3 Billion in Commerce flows through Essent’s solutions each year

Slide 4: EssentOne™

So what is EssentOne? EssentOne is a cloud-based business platform. It manages the critical parts of your business, including Customer Relationship Management, Order Management and Product Research. And it’s powered by the same Essent commerce engines that have driven business success for decades. So you know it’s built on a rock-solid foundation.

Slide 5: Product Configuration Surveys

The part of EssentOne we’re going to show you today is the Product Configuration Survey. Powered by the Essent Product Configuration Engine, the surveys make Order Entry and Order Processing as simple as answering a series of questions and prompts. You define what the surveys ask. You can have different surveys for different products. And the surveys are triggered when you add the product to an order. That way you know you’re capturing all the information you need for the order.

Slide 6: Flawed Orders are Costly

It’s important to have Well-Formed Orders because flawed orders are costly. Flawed product information like getting the imprint location wrong means someone has to go back and fix it. Omitting a line item like tape creation means someone has to go back and fix it. And a mistake in an order can mean more mistakes later. Bad information can stick to an order as it moves into fulfillment, shipping, invoicing, accounting and so on, introducing errors to new people in new departments or even other companies. All those mistakes take time to spot, discuss, correct, and otherwise manage. It can involve distributors, decorators, suppliers, and end users. All of which is costly.

Slide 7: Annual Cost of Flawed Orders

Essent estimates that flawed orders cost the industry more than 1 billion dollars annually in the man-hours it takes to fix them.

Slide 8: Every Order is Unique

Complicating matters is that no two orders are the same. A big box retailer can sell the same widget a million times. But the promotional products industry doesn’t have that luxury. Every order is customized, which is great for clients but complicated for our industry. Every product also has its own rules. How and where you can imprint a mug versus a pen versus a T-shirt are clearly different. So not only is every order custom, every order has a different set of rules. It’s a whole lot of variables that can and do go wrong. And it’s a whole lot of variables that could take time and money to fix.

Slide 9: Promotional Products Orders per Year

Based on the industry’s $20 billion annual revenue and an average order of about $1,500, there are more than 13M orders per year. All customized. And all with their own rules.

Slide 10: It’s Difficult to Know it All

That’s a lot to remember. New reps usually need training to know what product information to capture. And with so many customizations and rules, even veteran reps can miss a product detail or line item. With so many products, customizations, rules, and variables It takes a tall stack of knowledge for reps to get all those orders right the first time.

Slide 11: Products Available Within the Industry

Essent integrates with the leading product research databases in the industry: ASI, Sage, and Distributor Central. Combined, they list easily more than 1 million products available in the industry. That’s 1 million items each with their own customizations and rules. The industry simply lends itself to a lot of complexity.

Slide 12: EssentOne Surveys

EssentOne simplifies the complex with Product Configuration Surveys. The surveys prevent errors and omissions by distilling product configuration into a series of simple questions and prompts. The system knows what’s required and what’s allowed for each product. In fact, it will alert you if you miss information or enter bad information like an invalid print location. And since EssentOne knows the variables, it guides reps through the entire product configuration process. The result is Well-Formed Orders that are right the first time and stay right throughout the order lifecycle, saving time and money for everyone.

Slide 13: Presenter: Chimaine Shadd

And here to bring you a closer look is your presenter, Chimaine Shadd. Chimaine is a sales coordinator for Essent. And she’s also a specialist in the promotional products industry. Chimaine is going to illustrate the advantages of making technology planning an ongoing, regular part of business planning.

Slide 14: EssentOne Surveys

Thank you, Will. As we’ve seen, product configuration engine is presented in an easy-to-use survey where just answering a series of questions and prompts configures a product. Even though the industry has so many complex variables, reps stay on top of it all because the knowledge is in the system. It’s the knowledge you put into the system. And since EssentOne knows the rules for each product, all of the variables are accounted for. The result is Well-Formed Orders. And that’s a powerful tool.

Slide 15: Leveraging Well-Formed Orders

That Well-Formed Order is going to be the baseline for efficiency throughout the rest of your order lifecycle. Since the information is correct and adheres to your rules, the information now can be automated and integrated. With just a few clicks, that Well-Formed Order can automatically flow from quote to sales order to invoicing to shipping all the way out to accounting. No re-keying, no re-work, no hassle. Getting order right the first time sets you up for efficiency.

Slide 16: SiteBuilder™ Integration

Another powerful feature of the surveys is that now the end customer can configure products on a website. EssentOne integrates with the Essent SiteBuilder ecommerce platform. So now that survey can go out on your website. Again, the surveys are defined by you, so the end customer can only enter valid information. The end customer will walks through the same simple survey. When they submit the shopping cart, that order automatically flows into your back office with product configurations.

Slide 17: OrderTrax® Integration

And it doesn’t stop there. EssentOne also integrates with the Essent OrderTrax Network, which connects you to your trading partner. So now when that end customer submits the order on your website, the order not only flows through to your back office but also goes right to your trading partner. It’s ready for the production floor literally in a matter of minutes.

Slide 18: The Power of Well-Formed Orders

So in summary, an end customer can use a Product Configuration Survey on your SiteBuilder website. Then the order is automatically passed to EssentOne and transmitted through the OrderTrax Network to your trading partner. From end customer to production floor in a matter of minutes. It’s truly an end-to-end solution. And EssentOne Product Configuration Surveys are what make it possible by creating Well-Formed Orders.

Slide 19: Learn More.

The best way to learn more about EssentOne to get your own one-on-one demonstration. Just visit essent.com/EssentOneDemo to schedule a session. It’s free. You’ll be able to view other parts of the system, review the specific features that interest you the most, and ask as many questions as you like specific to you and your company. Again, that’s essent.com/EssentOneDemo for your free one-on-one. Thanks again for attending today’s webinar. EssentOne: The new way for you to take care of business.