Franchise Article

Around 75% of all online purchases are conducted in the business-to-business environment, suggesting that e-commerce is far more mature and readily accepted as a purchasing method for businesses rather than individuals. In fact AlphaGraphics own research conducted in July last year suggested that nearly 30% of its clients were already buying some business products or services online.

Yet all too often the internet is used to reduce products and services to their lowest common denominator, price. E-commerce is a powerful enabler to add value to a customer relationship. To really take advantage of e-commerce, businesses should seek to convert cost saving into more added value rather than simply reducing the ‘cost per unit’ of a product or service.

 

At AlphaGraphics we have firmly seized the e-commerce opportunity and now use it to increase our service offering beyond the norm for a print provider. E-commerce has enabled us to become a true ‘visual communications partner’ for many of our clients and it has enabled us to increase our value of sales with these clients by adding greater value to our services.

Leading with our core business of design and digital printing, we use e-commerce to forge deep customer relationships, integrating our business with our clients business and providing win-win situations at corporate level.

Our product, ‘AG Online’ is a comprehensive print management solution. With the click of a mouse users can order, control and measure their communication materials through an intuitive and secure website that saves them time and money.

How AG Online benefits clients;

•    Takes the pain out of buying print by providing a single source for buying and tracking all of the client’s visual communications.
•    Saves client’s time by decentralising ordering whilst maintaining central control for budgets and inventory.
•    Improves time to market by using pre-determined approved templates and instant online proofing.
•    Improves brand consistency by maintaining pre-approved marketing materials and business stationery, all produced at the same location to ensure consistency.
•    Empowers users by offering flexible management reporting which helps with tracking marketing campaign effectiveness or simply managing budgets.
•    Lowers the cost of transacting business by enabling consolidated invoicing and the flexibility to ship single orders to multiple locations.
•    Improves process efficiency by linking directly into client procurement systems such as SAP or Oracle.

It’s a win-win situation

“Ecommerce not only adds value to the client relationship, it reduces costs within the franchisee too” says Jason Simpson, Managing Director of AlphaGraphics UK.

AlphaGraphics franchisee Sean Costigan comments; “Just 2 of our many client sites will generate some 1,500 orders this year, and a significant saving is made in our business by having these orders come to us via online trading. Orders flow directly into our sales order processing system meaning that man hours are not wasted by manually taking orders and processing them.”
Unique Support

The AlphaGraphics e-Commerce package “AG Online” is just one of our unique support tools available to all franchisees. When you’re looking at a print-related franchise, don’t settle for a retail-based print-shop, to succeed in this industry you need leading edge IT support and a franchisor who has invests heavily in ecommerce.

AlphaGraphics has ‘green-field’ territories available in most areas of the UK. Contact us if you have a successful sales & marketing background.