Team Concept in Action

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Case Studies
Team Concept in Action
By
Jan 13, 2004, 12:05

Situation
A Large publishing house has approximately 25 different brands that they publish under. There is a lot of marketing material to Field Sales and in-house personnel that is needed to promote the multitude of books that are produced from these various brands, i.e. Press Releases, kit collations, postcard mailings, in addition to Point-of-Purchase items such as shelf talkers. There are also regular promotional material that is distributed weekly, monthly, quarterly etc. Sometimes they combine these brands in a super-mailer, but they also market the brands individually. They needed a company that could handle the regular and ad hoc fulfillment in a timely fashion, but more importantly keep their inventory in scrupulous order. Many of the items needed to have the same part number, but allocated to individual projects. Often, the material would come in the same day it needed to go out, so speed of receipt and handling were paramount.

Solution
MDF created teams specific to the needs of the publisher that includes a Receiving/Warehousing team, a Production Team, and a Customer Service Team. We also created an automatic part generation component of our inventory system so that time was not wasted in naming conventions. On-line access allows the client administrators to check on their inventory at will, which eliminated a lot of the status calls. To facilitate outbound mailings, MDF designed a one-piece packing slip/label combination with the clientˇs logo pre-printed on it. With the team concept and some alterations to our current inventory system and order generation system, MDF was able to supply a group effort and accomplish what the client needed.

Benefits

Getting the material to the sales force faster assured that the books would get on the shelves more quickly, in the time-sensitive book market.
The client still has access to their inventory levels at a click of the mouse.