A Game-Changer for Promo Products!
A Game-Changer for Promo Products!
Consolidus and ESM help change the game and uphold your campus brand with a new experience to browse, shop and buy merchandise.
Our case study campus is located in the heart of a vibrant city, along the banks of a river. Known for its rich history, Southern charm, and lively college town atmosphere, this campus offers a blend of cultural, educational, and recreational activities. The city’s close-knit neighborhoods and friendly residents, along with its love for college sports, especially football, give it a unique and energetic spirit. Our case study university is the largest public institution in the state and the flagship of its university system. With over 39,000 students, it boasts a diverse range of bachelor’s, master’s,
educational specialist, and doctorate programs, as well as a strong athletic presence.
“Three different processes are now consolidated into one convenient path to buy”
Eliminating inefficiencies and the strategic imperative for seamless services
Enabling everyone across the university to easily purchase promotional items needed to support
and enhance the sense of campus community is a shared goal of the purchasing and marketing teams. However, outdated online and manual paper-based processes hindered their efforts,
making the ordering of promotional goods challenging. And, as the number of users and volume of orders increased, so did the paperwork and the delays between purchase requests, approvals, and ordering.
To avoid exacerbating inefficiencies and frustrations, the purchasing team knew this needed a re-think. Embracing the university’s strategic imperative to modernize technology, they partnered with ESM Solutions and specialist promotional experts Consolidus to assess and tackle the problem head-on.
Frictionless access to branded and promotional merchandise
By partnering with Consolidus, our case study institution brought together expertise for sourcing
and accessing the best promotional goods, and for managing brand standards with seamless shopping experiences, using ESM Purchase. And as a result, they benefited from the new buying experiences and integration with the university’s Banner ERP system. ESM’s certified integrations
with Ellucian Banner use Ellucian Ethos enabling the university to tackle:
Through this collaboration, the university was able to provide easier access to their famous brand
with the peace of mind that the institution’s merchandise standards. And the benefits are adding up in time-saved, steps removed, and the improved buying experiences that are transformed for the wider community.
The pathway to promotional convenience and compliance
Implementing an immersive and connected promotional goods buying experience is a lofty
goal for any institution. Working closely with Consolidus and ESM, a set of key milestones to transform promotional procurement processes were agreed, focusing on realizing benefits such as cost savings, digitalization, automation, and enhanced brand accuracy. “We help address the challenges of fragmented spending, brand misuse, unreliable suppliers, and a lack of visibility across all promotional products,” shares Justin Waynick, Director of Corporate Sales, Consolidus LLC, “when multiple departments across campus order from numerous vendors, institutions risk their brand integrity and fail to leverage their buying power effectively,” continues Justin.
Success milestones:
Challenges:
Results:
“Throughout the journey our project teams focused on the key success factors to make the
new immersive and connected promotional goods service a reality,” says Richard Forrest, Chief
Product Officer, ESM Solutions “and we never lost sight of the opportunity for the university to realize
greater operational efficiency, reduce staff workloads, and achieve cost savings.”
Engage key stakeholders
“We secured faculty buy-in across the institution, including people from procurement, accounts
payable, IT, and marketing,” continues Richard “by involving diverse stakeholders, the university
covered all aspects of procurement associated with branded goods helping us to ensure the service meets both the current and evolving needs of their users.”
Show and test
As well as securing broad stakeholder inputs, the university collaborated with users from different departments across the university to validate progress, test the services and to provide feedback at every step.
“Campus users provided invaluable insight on topics ranging from minimizing the paper-based forms, identifying process steps that involved repetitive data keying, latency and streamlining workflows”, says Lindsey Myers, Director of Client Engagement, Consolidus, “we used regular check in reviews for all aspects of the new service to keep user needs at the forefront”. In parallel, the marketing team played a crucial role in loading the prized branding elements into the new service. As well as laying down guidelines for online ordering, the team ensured institutions’ name and visuals stay brand-safe and brand-secure.
Seamless synergy: ESM and Consolidus digitize the promotional storefront experience!
Throughout the deployment, ESM and Consolidus focused on the end goal and the successful rollout of the new promotional storefront. Working seamlessly to achieve an end-to-end digitization of the buying process, the team integrated with the Ellucian ERP system using ETHOS-certified integration from ESM.
“ESM and Consolidus successfully integrate the new buying experience. Our technical teams worked directly together, avoiding the need for additional co-ordination or extra resources from the university,” says Joshua Faith, Chief Executive Officer, ESM “with expertise from both companies on-hand to support the project, our interactions with a variety of campus staff focused on achieving the buying transformation their users needed.” With more than 50 Ellucian institutions already benefiting from ESM Purchase, the pre-built ETHOS integrations helped the university to quickly connect up with Ellucian Banner to bring together the purchasing and accounts payable functions. And with the data now available in one place, the university can better target their promotional spending and achieve the savings identified in the project scope.
Champion a smarter spend
Justin emphasized the importance of leaving paper and ad-hoc spend behind to create a more
convenient and intuitive user experience. “We are very pleased that the university has now
enabled their community to easily browse, shop, and buy the branded promotional products they want. They are rightly thrilled with the end result and were keen to share this at a recent event“, Justin shares, “The Director of Purchasing shared how three different processes are now consolidated into one convenient path to buy.” We invite you to see how easy the user experience can be for yourself. And we created a convenient video demo too.
