Allied Office Products, the largest independent dealer of office goods and services in the US, has increased sales and improved customer service by using solutions from Ascential Software, the enterprise data integration leader. Allied Office Products can now effectively mine its enterprise systems for customer information and implement solutions that offer better connectivity and new services for its customer base.
To enable these new capabilities, the Ascential Enterprise Integration Suite and Ascential Real-Time Integration Services (RTI Services) provide the underlying infrastructure for OneSolution, Allied Office Products` innovative business management system. OneSolution links customer service, supply chain and order processing solutions in real-time to maximise cost savings, efficiency and customer satisfaction in a competitive, fragmented market.
The Ascential Enterprise Integration Suite profiles, cleanses and transforms customer data from disparate enterprise systems and consolidates it in a central data warehouse. The company is using Ascential ProfileStage and QualityStage to identify and eliminate duplicate records, incomplete fields, and other anomalies in its OneSolution system. Employees get on-the-fly error reports that identify redundant entries and notify sales and service representatives of missing data. This master data management approach yields consistent, reliable information and deep insights into its customer base and sales trends.
Ascential RTI Services allows Allied Office Products to offer real-time customer service, order processing and supply chain management. For instance, Allied Office Products is exploiting the Web services capabilities of Ascential RTI Services to let customers rapidly process returns online. The solution plays a pivotal role in deploying and managing these services by creating a link back to the company`s enterprise systems and integrating the data, says Ken DesRochers, senior VP of IT at Allied Office Products.
"Ascential helped us gain the elusive 360-degree view of our customer that many companies strive for but few achieve," says DesRochers. "This is helping us improve our responsiveness, customer intimacy and product and service offerings. This is how we differentiate and succeed in an aggressive market populated with many competitors, ranging from small operations to national office supply superstores."
DesRochers says the challenge in achieving one cohesive view of the customer was that customer data was dispersed among three disparate systems, including Oracle 9i, running on a Solaris SPARC system and supporting Allied`s e-commerce Web site; Salesforce.com, the company`s Web-based customer-relationship management (CRM) system; and, for financials, a custom-built legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, running on an IBM AIX RS/6000 system with a UniData database.
After evaluating various data integration point products, Allied Office Products chose the Ascential Enterprise Integration Suite for the completeness of its solution, its interoperability with the company`s heterogeneous existing IT systems, and its Web services capabilities.
"Having access to a complete, fully integrated solution from one vendor was a major plus in terms of managing our risk," says DesRochers. "I had confidence that the data profiling, quality, and transformation solutions were fully integrated and optimised. This reduces the cost and potential pitfalls of assembling point products from multiple vendors, and that`s important."
"Allied Office Products is a clear example of the strategic role IT should play within an organisation," says Julian Field, MD of local Ascential distributor CenterField Software. "Allied has fundamentally changed the way it operates and created measurable business value using innovative data integration solutions from Ascential Software. This linkage between the boardroom and back room objectives and initiatives is critical."
Founded in 1947 and based in Clifton, New Jersey, Allied provides office supplies, furniture, coffee and beverage, print and promotional products to clients of varying size and across a range of industries. Operating primarily in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions, the company has 17 sales offices throughout the US. Allied has acquired 29 companies since 1998, and the company`s strategy of acquisitions and organic growth has yielded 60% annual revenue growth rate, reaching sales of $300 million in 2001.
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