Situation

According to the Gates Automotive Aftermarket team, the online fulfillment tool used to support field sales staff was slow and out-of-date. The reporting function was limited and the tool that once stood for corporate innovation had no way to adapt.
In a preliminary study, the Automotive Aftermarket Team found that nearly one third of the warehoused marketing materials were over six years old and some pallets had been building up dust for over 10 years. Additionally, many of those materials had less than a handful of orders per year. Simply put,

budgets were being devoured by storage fees for warehousing out-of-date collateral.
From sourcing and bidding to buying and tracking, procurement of marketing collateral took a great deal of time. Valuable resources were diverted from day-to-day strategic brand building and sales support, to bulky process management, phone calls and follow-ups. With talk of web-to-print and print on demand just beginning to peak curiosity, there was simply no extra time to keep up.

Solution

In 2007 Gates Corporation made the decision to partner with Rastar Communications. The challenge for Rastar was to build a powerful tool that would encompass a traditional fulfillment pick-and-pack warehouse with a Web-based print-on-demand tool and also give Gates field users the added value of customizing certain marketing materials.
The interface needed to be user-friendly, yet support a robust inventory control system. It needed to be flexible and scalable. It also needed to provide comprehensive reporting of monthly activity. Bottom line, the tool had

to tackle the issues that drained time and budgets from the corporation and support sales and growth. Ultimately, this would allow Gates to do more with less.
With Innovation as the driver, Rastar put together a mix of traditional pick-and-pack, web-to-print and customizable offerings. Now the field users are able to shop for marketing materials in one location for everything they need. With the ability to customize on-the-fly, the message is now personal and the brand image protected.

Results

Today Rastar hosts and manages a state-of-the-art fulfillment solution for the Gates Automotive Aftermarket division. From the initial auditing process to the final implementation, Rastar has worked closely with the Gates Automotive Aftermarket team to address their unique needs. What seemed like a monumental task has proven to be a streamlined and manageable process. The reporting is dynamic. At the end of each month Gates can easily pull a multitude of reports to see who is ordering materials and how they are utilizing the system. If they can’t find a report, custom reports are a phone call away. They are now able monitor fast moving materials and make

educated decisions on what to warehouse physically versus virtually based on the past weeks, months or years worth of data.
From point-of-purchase and fleet graphics to collateral and direct mail, Rastar hosts the gamut of digital, litho, large format and mailing printing and finishing equipment. Rastar’s breadth and depth of production capabilities is key to supporting Gates’ day-to-day production needs. And with the consolidation of Gates’ print-spend, Rastar is able to pass along best-customer pricing for program work that runs outside the fulfillment tool.