Opportunity
Visions Federal Credit Union is a nonprofit financial institution entirely owned by its members. Celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2016, Visions serves more than 187,000 members with 46 offices in communities throughout New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. Services include banking as well as auto, home, personal, and business loans.
As a growing institution with strong member relationships, offering branded promotional items to their branches is a crucial component of their marketing strategy. With 46 offices in 3 states, something as simple as sending branded pens to all these locations is extremely challenging, primarily if the need was time-sensitive, such as in time for a trade show or a branch-specific event. Picking the quantities needed from bins located in the storage area, getting them packed in the right quantities and shipping them to the correct locations was a full-time job for one of their valued marketers. In addition, this person also was in charge of receiving. The shipments had to be verified for quality and order size, as well as transported to the storage area.
Solution
Tom Husted is the Velocity Sales Representative for Visions FCU. Visions had been a Velocity Print services’ client, and after hearing about their challenges with promotional item management, Tom introduced them to Velocity’s Corporate Solution. Within a few weeks, Velocity launched a custom corporate portal for select Visions FCU employees to order items directly from an inventory of promotional products that are now being warehoused and fulfilled by Velocity.
It’s now as simple as the authorized employees logging into the portal, selecting the item, shipment location, and entering the quantity needed. Once an order comes in, a Velocity team member pulls, picks, packs, and ships the items directly to the appropriate location. In addition, Velocity now handles inventory management, including verifying the quality of items received and takes care of any issues before Visions FCU even needs to worry about it.
Results
Because of all the bundled services Visions FCU has with Velocity, they are now seeing significant savings in their promotional item spend. In addition, Velocity provides Visions FCU with custom reports, so they can see existing inventory levels and the relationship between promotional item spend at a specific location and the amount of new business it generates. The reports serve as a valuable tool for annual budgeting as well.
The key employee whose time was completely absorbed with promotional item management is now freed up to attend grand openings, plan community events, and overall be more engaged in much higher value-added marketing activities.
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