Discover your next big idea at PACK EXPO Las Vegas this September
Experience a breakthrough in packaging & processing and transform your business with solutions from 2,300 suppliers spanning all industries.
REGISTER NOW & SAVE

Web Plus: Online tool strengthens distributor's sales force

Online collaboration tool helps distributor’s sales reps find cost savings for packagers.

Afflink, a group of more than 500 independent distributors, including about 170 distributors of packaging machines and materials, recently developed a collaborative and web-based sales force automation tool called iSys.

Designed to support continuous-improvement efforts at customer locations, iSys helps identify cost-saving opportunities for customers. All activities related to such an opportunity, and the savings realized from the continuous-improvement efforts, are captured by iSys so they can be documented and shown to the customer. The Web-based system is said to be especially good at enabling Afflink distributors to bring cost-saving opportunities to multi-unit customers across North America.

Among the early adopters of iSys is Shippers Supply Co. An Afflink member based in Louisville, KY, Shippers Supply handles primarily end-of-line materials such as stretch wrap, shrink wrap, and tape, as well as the equipment that applies them. Coding and marking throughout packaging and manufacturing lines is also the firm’s area of expertise.

“Before we began using iSys,” says Henry Camp, president of Shippers Supply, “we had no good way of tracking a sales person’s activity. Now we do. And not just one sales person’s activity, but the activity of all 18 sales people. Because it’s a Web-based system easily accessed by each of our sales people, they can bench mark against each other and gain a clearer idea of just how well they’re doing.”

A user name and password are required to access the system. For each person given access, Shippers Supply pays Afflink a fee. “Annually, the cost is less than half of what most sales-contact management software systems would cost,” says Camp.

Camp acknowledges that the activity tracked via iSys could also be tracked in more traditional and less Web-enabled ways. But he finds a Web-based system is far more efficient.

“Suppose sales representative John Doe makes a call and realizes a customer is using a stretch film that only stretches 72%,” says Camp. “John knows there’s a film that stretches 300%, and he also knows the equipment that’s needed to handle it. What iSys provides is a clean, easy-to-comprehend mechanism for presenting such cost-savings opportunities to customers. John doesn’t have to work up a proposal. He simply goes online, signs in, and prints a report right there in the customer’s office. It’s easy and it requires virtually no training. And because it’s accessible via the Web, anybody who is authorized can use it.”

Annual Outlook Report: Workforce
Hiring remains a major challenge in packaging, with 78% struggling to fill unskilled roles and 84% lacking experienced workers. As automation grows, companies must rethink hiring and training. Download the full report for key insights.
Download Now
Annual Outlook Report: Workforce
Conveying Innovations Report
Editors report on distinguishing characteristics that define each new product and collected video demonstrating the equipment or materials as displayed at the show. This topical report, winnowed from nearly 300 PACK EXPO collective booth visits, represents a categorized, organized account of individual items that were selected based on whether they were deemed to be both new, and truly innovative, based on decades of combined editorial experience in experiencing and evaluating PACK EXPO products.
Take me there
Conveying Innovations Report