A prominent mail order business specializing in gift basket and college care package delivery found itself in a predicament: As catalog sales began to take off, processing the growing volume of physical mail orders became too difficult for the modest inhouse fulfillment team.

“The process was cumbersome, expensive and time-consuming,” said the company’s Senior Operations Manager. “We’re dealing with paper order forms in the hundreds of thousands, so you can imagine how much staff and handling that takes. We realized, ‘Our business is growing above and beyond our projections so we need to increase our capacity and increase it quickly.”

Processing, scanning and verifying the physical orders became a full-time operational concern. Not only was the process unsustainable from an operational perspective, the nature of these orders made errors common. The company felt that, unless it could offload some of this processing, the business would not be able to scale and maximize revenue.

ARDEM Helps Shift Resources

After connecting with ARDEM and agreeing to try a proprietary software solution to this mail order conundrum, the company started by sending 10,000 of its mail orders to ARDEM
for processing.

ARDEM’s detailed and quality conscious process enabled dramatic and immediate results. ARDEM is able to quickly process, scan and record digital images of every order and return
the information back to the company in a fraction of the time it used to take to process the orders in-house. Within three years, ARDEM has increased processing from only 10 percent of the total volume to nearly 75 percent of orders.

Growing the Top Line While Minimizing Impact

ARDEM’s innovative and expedient solution has enabled the business relationship to grow and deepen. The company’s Senior Operations Manager stated that, due to the considerable cost savings associated with ARDEM’s flexible solution, they’ve had ongoing discussions about using more of ARDEM’s full suite of solutions.

Even better, the ongoing impact on the bottom line couldn’t be clearer: With ARDEM handling data entry, top-line operational resources can pursue other vital initiatives. Orders are processed more quickly and accurately, reducing the number of Fulfillment and Customer service related issues – thus saving the company money.

“We have a large fulfillment operation, so we’re focused on cost savings,” the Senior Operations Manager said. “If you can reduce the number of staff but maintain or increase production levels, you’re on the right path. It means you can continue to grow the top line and minimize impact. To date, ARDEM has helped us do both.

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