Revolutionary Personalized Design Studio application positions Crane & Co. ahead of competitionSituationFacing growing competition, Crane & Co. needed to shake-up its personalized stationery business. Additionally, high sales associate turnover in retail stores coupled with a “steep learning curve” design system presented significant challenges to their goal to be a leader in this market. In response, Crane & Co. partnered with C2 to develop the revolutionary Personalized Design Studio (PDS) application. Designed to impress customers as well as optimize Crane’s internal operations, PDS provides easy-to-use design tools, professional typesetting features, fill-in-the-blank job submission, and electronic order status updates. Integrating across Crane’s enterprise, PDS links third-party proof-rendering technology as well as Crane’s back-end production management systems.
ResultsSales associates can now show customers (brides-to-be, new parents, etc.) exactly what their personalized product (wedding invitation, birth announcement, etc.) is going to look like. And if it isn’t absolutely perfect, they can try different fonts, colors, motifs, styles, copy, etc.; producing a new “proof” immediately each time. What does this mean for customers? It means no more guessing, visualizing, and hoping that their stationery comes out as they want. They can leave the store knowing exactly what their product is going to look like. What does this mean for Crane? With customers able to view their custom product during the initial visit to the store, Crane realizes shortened sales cycles and increased number of sales. Additionally, by integrating systems across the enterprise and transforming business processes, Crane has realized operational efficiencies and improved order turn-around time as well as enabled new business models with distributors such as Tiffany and Cartier.
Says Wes Hopmans, IT Director for Crane, "Crane’s Personalized Design Studio (PDS) is the cornerstone of a strategic initiative to defend our position as market leader in the industry by using leading edge technology as a driver for our focus on innovation. Crane’s closest competitor delivers proofs in 24 hours; our PDS delivers proofs within seconds. This solution enables us to rewrite the rules in the Personalized Stationery industry, both in the stationery retail stores channel as well as in our own manufacturing facility. PDS positions Crane’s to take the lead in customer satisfaction and delivery turnaround.”
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|  | It’s wonderful! Once you learn the basics, you wonder how we ever got on without it. Making changes is very easy, so the process becomes much more efficient for the customer and us. It saves a lot of time and helps us close sales much quicker.
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Becky Wiggins and Sherry Moon,
J.P. Stevens
(J.P. Stevens creates 97% of its personalized stationery orders using PDS.) | |
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