Visions Federal Credit Union has been established and operating for over 50 years, with locations in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Velocity’s initial partnership started a few years back, acting as the company’s print services’ vendor. In this role Velocity assisted with acquiring print materials for Vision’s 50 plus branches and over 210,000 members. During this time, Visions managed the ordering, storage, inventory, and fulfillment of their promotional materials at their main office located within their retail branch in Endicott, NY.
The Challenge Before An Online Storefront
While trying to juggle the many areas of promotional material fulfillment, Visions was up against many challenges which impacted the efficiency and effectiveness of their other branch locations. To start, because their main office was located above a retail branch, members attending to their banking needs would witness the arrival, unloading, movement and overall commotion of receiving new credit union marketing materials whenever they came in. The branch employees became responsible for handling the products when they arrived, which prevented them from carrying out their regular duties.
Employees Stretched As They Pick Up The Slack
Under the established system, employees would have to wait for the order to arrive, haul everything to the basement, verify quantity and quality, find storage space, and unpack it. Then when materials were ordered, employees would have to find a box, locate the correct materials, package up all the materials and get it shipped. All of that took about an hour out of these employees’ days.
A Chance Encounter Brings a Solution
During a visit to Vision’s headquarters, a sales rep from Velocity coincidentally witnessed the process being carried out and suggested Vision review Velocity’s branded online storefront program as a possible solution to these challenges.
Upon review, Visions determined an online storefront solution with Velocity would meet its needs but wanted it operational in just a few weeks for the start of 2017.
Velocity Steps Up to The Challenge
We were happy to get Visions’ custom storefront up and running on time to service their branches and improve their promotional and print needs.
Now assigned users at Visions’ branches can log in to the online storefront, choose the items they need, select a pre-programmed shipping address and order, bringing the entire process down to 6 minutes on average.
What Does Velocity Do?
Velocity quality checks and monitors inventory, so they don’t have to. Certain items are programmed to be automatically reordered when they reach pre-set minimums to ensure these items are always available at a quality needed for their business and all storage of materials is handled at Velocity’s warehouse, giving Visions headquarters their basement back.
Additionally, Visions communicated that they wanted to control who had permissions to order. We instituted site permissions, and users were divided by location, allowing Visions to review how much the team in each state was spending and set budgets per user.
The Results
Since instituting the website storefront, Visions can glean insights into demand and spending by location to determine the budget and what materials to fulfill for the upcoming year using bespoke reports. For instance, Visions learned that in New Jersey, their members love light-up piggy bank keychains, but that item was not as popular in Pennsylvania.
Item costs have also been included to show value to the users ordering and to assist them in being more strategic about what items they order to serve different events and audiences.
Mandy Dehate, Associate Vice President, shared that “the best part about all of this is that it has left my staff with more time for other projects…and when it comes to the disadvantages, there really aren’t any” She hopes that Visions serves as “just one example of what a great process this can be for you.”
If your credit union is struggling with managing marketing materials, Velocity would love to ease your workload and give back time to your employees through setting up a custom online storefront. Start getting your time back, by contacting us today!