Integration Matters

This article originally appeared in the May/June 2021 issue of PS Magazine.

At the PPAI Technology Summit in 2014, Ken Phu, vice president of technology for promotional products supplier Hub Pen, described automated order processing as the “Holy Grail” for the promo industry. The problem was clear to others in the room: The need to manually process orders — often wrought with missing or unclear information — was a costly issue for suppliers and distributors.
 

Essentially, the challenge has existed since the dawn of business — how to quickly and accurately communicate what a customer needs, so a vendor can produce and deliver it on time. The print world is no exception, with its own set of specifications, customization requirements and disparate technology systems.
 

Studies from PPAI and others have shown that poorly formed purchase orders from promo distributors to suppliers cost millions of dollars in lost revenue annually, not to mention giant headaches among end users. (Think of all the incorrect style numbers for apparel, or the times decoration costs are unknown, or when imprint information is unclear.)
 

Phu, though, had good news for his colleagues at the meeting. Hub Pen had been processing orders accurately and automatically, without the need to speak with distributors for clarification, and without undue delay. The company’s president, Joseph Fleming, told the audience that orders coming in from one of its distributors, Oshkosh, Wisconsin-based MARCO Promos, were reaching the production floor in about half the time because they didn’t have to be seen by anyone in the order-entry department. Nothing had to be re-keyed.
 

Better speed and accuracy had generated cost savings that Hub Pen was now passing on to MARCO Promos, and in turn the distributor was giving Hub Pen more repeat business. “Our relationship with Hub Pen is surely one of the most seamless relationships in the entire industry,” says Kimberly Scoville, CFO of MARCO Promos.
 

The meeting’s attendees learned that technology empowering the smooth supply chain partnership was developed by Essent Corporation, a Bethlehem, Pennsylvania-based provider of fully integrated business management software. Its OrderTrax® Network technology uses EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) standards to allow trading partners to exchange electronic business documents. 
 

The win-win story was part of a bigger-picture movement for promotional products leaders. Essent and other companies were now helping to define and write code that could be used for widespread integration in the promo space. The initiative was called PromoStandards, and the question was clear: Who else wanted to participate so they could spend more time on productive activities like sales?
 

PromoStandards: What It Is, What It Does

PromoStandards (PromoStandards.org) is not software available for purchase, nor a company that makes plug-and-play tools, nor a for-profit organization.
 

Rather, PromoStandards is more like a map that guides developers and details how they can write computer code using a common set of instructions. That effort comes from a group of volunteer distributors, suppliers and service providers dedicated to improving supply chain efficiency in the promo industry. Their standards allow distributors and suppliers to integrate — to connect their computer systems so distributors and suppliers can automatically send and receive business information in real time.
 

This is more important than ever because of the popularity of consumer-focused online ordering systems. As print and marketing services firms can attest, success today requires more than just the ability to sell products; it also takes the ability to connect to supply chain partners. Sometimes money saved is easier to achieve than money made.
 

Although integration and collaboration efforts among PromoStandards members began years earlier, PromoStandards was officially formalized in 2019. Its current board and members represent over $10 billion in sales, and they’re committed to improving IT efficiency in the promo market.
 

The information that can be shared among PromoStandards members is data most often needed to move transactions forward:

• Inventory (Price and Availability)
• Order Status
• Ship Notices
• Media (Product Images and Videos)
• Product Data
• Purchase Orders
• Product Configuration
• Invoices

“Before PromoStandards there was no industry standard way to place a configured order, critical to custom product industries, and no way to check the status of the order on demand,” says Eric Alessi, president and CEO of Essent. “PromoStandards solves these problems and more. It has unified digital integration for the promotional products industry and has significantly reduced transaction labor and costs between trading partners.”
 

“Digital integration provides accessibility to real-time transactional data that allows distributors visibility to their orders,” adds Bryan Sheaffer, vice president of sales at Essent. “For suppliers, integration reduces customer service labor across the board. It’s a win-win where buyers have a better buying experience and sellers have an easier time selling and everyone has more visibility than ever before.”
 

At the same time, Sheaffer says, trading partners are still challenged with the fact that their core business is not integration and they may need to support multiple protocols. That’s why technology like Essent’s OrderTrax Network is so important. “It makes implementation as simple as possible, whether companies are using the PromoStandards protocol or other protocols,” he says.
 

The Big Question: Can the Same Be Done for Print?

As Brand Chain President Andrew Alford pointed out in his column in this issue, companies in the print industry have a long history of working toward improving technology integration, including the stalled PrintTalk efforts of the early 2000s.

But, as Alford writes, “Integration brings us closer to our partners, provides real-time access to order positioning in the fulfilment cycle, and helps us make informed decisions that can cultivate the buying process.”

To that end, and to map out the most significant integration needs between print distributors and suppliers, Brand Chain recently joined PromoStandards as an advisory member and formed a Technology Committee that includes several PromoStandards members. The association is committed to providing information and resources to help its members bring about more seamless integration.

In May 2021, more than 40 Brand Chain members joined a webinar led by Jon Norris, COO of Starline, a $40 million supplier based in Buffalo, New York, and the current chair of the PromoStandards board. During the webinar, Norris outlined why he believes an effort similar to PromoStandards could work in the print industry, pointing out that it could enable much more efficient print on demand. 

Meanwhile, Essent has joined Brand Chain. “We see print as a sister industry of promo, and we want to bring the same level of integration we developed in promo to print,” Sheaffer says. “The industries are very similar in a number of ways, including overlapping markets, suppliers, and distributors and is a natural fit.”

Marco Peña, Essent’s business development manager, says, “Both industries have highly customizable products. Each order can be different than another. And there’s a high priority to remove friction from the supply chain. Broadly speaking, many of the issues that we’ve learned and solved over almost two decades in the promo industry are issues that the print industry also wants to solve.”

Says Alessi: “The success in the promo industry not only illustrates what can happen, it offers a roadmap as to how to do it.”

Darin Painter was editor-in-chief of PS Magazine.