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Product promotions, such as rebates
or subsidized promotional items, can serve as excellent marketing
and sales tools to drive increased revenues by providing incentives
for customers to purchase select items. But when you are a leading
global networking provider like 3Com that serves thousands of channel
partners and customers, it is critical that promotions can be easily
managed and executed.
To gain better control over the
creation and execution of its product promotions, 3Com used Savvion
business process automation and management platform to build a Web-based
system that streamlines the approval and management workflow of
product promotions offered to distributors and resellers.
“We needed to ensure that
our product promotions were attractive to our channel partners while
also being manageable in terms of execution, explains Ari Bose,
CIO at 3Com. Using Savvion BusinessManager we were able to quickly
put a process in place that speeds approval and enhances awareness
of product promotions to generate opportunities for increased revenue.
Promoting Effective Promotions
The Savvion BusinessManager-based promotions system provides significant time and cost savings by replacing former inefficient and uncontrollable e-mail processes. Instead of informally sending promotion ideas around for approval, employees now use the automated system as a centralized location to manage the workflow involved in proposing new promotions and ensuring all needed approvals are in place before promotion details are shared on the 3Com partner and reseller Web site.
The promotions system automatically routes proposed promotions to each department that is required to sign off on the promotion, including marketing, promotions communications, and claims administration. The streamlined system also immediately notifies all key parties once new promotions are approved, increasing visibility and revenue opportunities through improved communication with 3Com sales representatives, distributors, and resellers.
Adding Muscle to Management
An important feature of the new system is the automatic auditing of each step taken. Savvion BusinessManager now allows 3Com to easily establish an audit trail, increasing accountability as approvals are given. The structured process also ensures that approved promotions are manageable from an administrative perspective.
In addition, the BusinessManager system tracks promotion fulfillment,
enforcing associated terms and conditions such as purchasing limits
or available supplies tracking that was previously almost impossible
to do, creating numerous management headaches. The promotions system
is also integrated with another BusinessManager-developed process
that generates special price quotes (SPQs) for 3Com channel partners,
creating built-in checks and balances to prevent the approval of
an SPQ while a promotion is being offered for the same product.
Furthermore, Savvion BusinessManager provides extensive reporting capabilities that 3Com now uses to gain a better understanding of all offered promotions, authorizations, and potential financial impacts. These online reports replace manually created Excel spreadsheets, enabling departments to generate reports on the fly for enhanced strategic planning.
Bottom-line Benefits
The Savvion BusinessManager system is providing 3Com with significant opportunities for increased revenue through greater visibility of product promotions. Sales representatives are immediately notified when promotions are approved, improving internal communications and enabling representatives to share promotion details with resellers and distributors more quickly to foster increased sales.
Other business benefits delivered by the automated promotions system include the following:
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Real-time monitoring
features enable 3Com employees to check the status of promotions
approval at any time. |
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Greater efficiency
in the approval cycle and streamlined communications increase
employee productivity, providing significant time and cost savings.
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Claims
processing is also more effective as a result of the structured
approval process, delivering additional savings. |
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Increased visibility enables 3Com to reduce reserve spending
by having a clearer idea of channel response to each promotion.
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Savvion BusinessManager quickly
brings order and efficiency to previously chaotic manual processes
notes 3Com Information Management Director Kathleen O'Neill. We
plan to use Savvion’s business process management platform
to develop many other automated processes to streamline operations.
“We are pleased with
the results that 3Com, a company famous for delivering innovative
solutions, has gained using our enterprise process platform,”
adds John Koenigs, Savvion President and CEO. We look forward to
seeing the creative ways that 3Com will further leverage the power
of Savvion BusinessManager to bring innovation to processes across
their enterprise.
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