Amtrak
customer:

Amtrak

project: eProcurement solution
business: Domestic & International Couriers
timescale: 2005 to 2008
region: National
services: eSP
eProcurement
Design service
locations: 100+ (Combination of Franchise & Corporate branches)

Overview

Established in 1987, Amtrak positioned itself as a B2C express parcels carrier. Over the years they had built up a national network of over 100 branches. A combination of franchised and wholly owned operators, at the time they had a turnover of £80m.

Client Need

In 2005, Amtrak Express Parcels came to besley & copp with a number of problems they wanted us to solve. Operationally, they were finding it increasingly difficult to handle the print management requirements of their UK branch network.

Consistency of message had become an ongoing problem, particularly within the franchise network, where franchisees were producing marketing material, which was not on brand or conveyed a consistent message. Amtrak had little centralised control and no mechanism in place to educate, inform or even support the franchise networks marketing activity.

print management was chaotic. The company was spending a huge amount on print through wastage and by being unable to aggregate what was spent on print across the company. Individual branches and particularly franchisees would order on an adhoc basis, often for small runs and used an antiquated system of fax and telephone orders.

Finally, if that was enough, Amtrak was experiencing increasing service issues with their incumbent supplier.

Solution

After the initial besley & copp print audit, we migrated all internal procurement online, by installing our eProcurement solution eSP. This not only carried all operational and marketing print, labels, stationery, packaging and promotional goods, but also uniforms and even pigeon boxes!!!! Amtrak being one of the only carriers licensed to carry livestock.

In total the Amtrak eSP solution carried over 100 different print and product lines, stored, picked, packed and distributed from one single besley & copp location. We introduced pro-active stock management and detailed reporting across both franchise and corporate branches.

Amtrak were supported by our in-house design service giving one point of contact for design to final manufacture. We also installed eSP’s intranet module allowing the company to keep in regular contact with the network and its 500 plus stakeholders, with training information, regulatory changes and market information.

Amtrak installed eSP’s eCommerce module giving the company the ability to offer dual pricing through the web based resource allowing them to generate additional revenue from the franchisees.

Finally, besley & copp installed in eSP blog module. This brought the network together and became popular with franchisees who used it to share knowledge, advise and facilitated peer-to-peer training.

Benefit

It took besley & copp only one week to build, test and install the Amtrak version of our eProcurement solution eSP.

In just seven days, Amtrak went from chaos to having centralised control over their brand and all procurement across the 100 plus branches. In turn, centralised administration costs were reduced.

For further information on our of the franchise sector, our eSP eProcurement solutions or to gain secure access to demo eSP yourself, please Click here or call one of our specialists on +44 (0)1392 477137