Hallmark Greets Salesforce Automation
Hallmark has built a solid reputation for quality thanks in part to its landmark slogan, "When You Care Enough to Send the Very Best." The company also separated itself from competitors through its network of specialty Gold Crown retail stores, national advertising, and by sponsoring Hallmark Hall of Fame, one of television's most popular dramatic series. The company's Personal Expression products are found in more than 42,000 retail outlets domestically. About 5,700 are specialty stores -- 4,200 of which are certified Hallmark Gold Crown stores; another 30,000 are mass merchandisers, including discount and food stores.
Since a big portion of Hallmark business is its "everyday"--anniversary and birthday cards, gift wrap and party products, the company's IT department embarked on a project that began about two years ago to gauge how a new handheld device could improve the productivity of the company's mass-channel field service organization, people strictly focused on the maintenance of displays, reordering, fixing and taking inventory. The Hallmark IT department built an initial business case that included estimated time-savings that would come from improved functionality and better information access specific to each merchandisers' store assignments. A pilot was then approved for 50 users in six cities to actually measure the productivity improvement and build a business that would support a national roll out of the solution called Infolink, designed by Field Performance Group. Another one of Hallmark's partners on the Infolink initiative was Intermec. Hallmark selected Intermec's CN-1 device given its integrated scanner and the form-factor fit of the device to the work requirements of the in-store merchandiser role.
Scott O'Dell, IT director-sales for Hallmark, says the company wants to be certain that it is providing the right product. Accuracy of inventory and information, and keeping the displays set correctly to the planograms, are things that help dictate that the flow of goods are sufficient for each account.
"Keeping the inventory level accurate between the systems and within the stores is one of the jobs the service force and they can use Infolink to see what our system says compared to the on-hand data and then adjust if it isn't accurate."
Since Hallmark is predominantly a direct store delivery vendor in the mass channel, the company relied heavily on its previous reorder ticket model, where a card ticket located on the back of every card pocket had to be scanned to reorder. "With Infolink we're able to eliminate the need for those reorder tickets. Now, merchandisers just need to scan the product in the pocket and hit the auto re-order key on the device."
The Savings Continue
O'Dell says Field Performance Group was the right fit for Hallmark's needs because of its experience with PDA-type software development and ASP services. Field Performance also has a great deal of experience in merchandising and salesforce mobility, according to O'Dell, including automation to improve productivity in that area. "Obviously, their applications development is very nimble and because of that, our customer satisfaction ratings, since using the tool, are extremely high. While we're still improving the solution the field user group is becoming very comfortable with Infolink." When O'Dell and his team recently checked in with the field to see how the new handheld application is running, overwhelmingly positive feedback indicates that the field user group appreciates how much faster it is to work with displays since it is all on planogram. "Infolink helps get our products where they're supposed to be," says O'Dell. "There are fewer out of stocks, fewer holes in the display and our replenishment systems are able to reorder more product suited for the store's needs based on keeping the inventory levels accurate."
ABOUT HALLMARK
In 2003, Hallmark reported consolidated net revenues of $4.3 billion. Hallmark's share of the greeting card market is greater than 50 percent. Worldwide, Hallmark has more than 18,000 full-time employees. About 5,000 Hallmarkers work at the Kansas City headquarters, and 10,000 are associated full-time with the U.S. personal expression business. Through the Employee Profit Sharing and Ownership Plan, Hallmark employees own nearly one-fifth of the company. Hallmark's creative staff consists of around 800 artists, designers, stylists, writers, editors and photographers. Together they generate more than 23,000 new and redesigned greeting cards and related products per year. The company offers more than 40,000 products in its model line at any one time.