Case study for retail business in greeting cards, gifts & photo printing
Greg and Amy run a retail business in greeting cards, gifts and photo printing. Being owners themselves, they are particularly careful with the spending and expenses.
Even though Greg and Amy are conscientious with the capital outlay, they are aware of the need for automation and use of internet to improve efficiency, save time and drive down the operating costs. Through Ajax Workspace, it appears that they have found the solution.
To Greg and Amy, Ajax Workspace fits in nicely into their business model for a few reasons:
- No system start-up cost. They get on with setting up the access immediately
- No lengthy system testing and conversion. The system is ready
- Very little capital outlay. Greg and Amy do not have to pay for high software costs but they pay on the time they use depending on the users they create, plus the cost of setting up and internet access
- It's online. Internet enables them to connect with the key people in their business almost immediately, and it is paperless
With Ajax Workspace, Greg and Amy managed to do the following:
- Using the Task bars, Greg and Amy plan their activities online from day to day operations to bill payments. The formats are easy to use and straight forward
- Plan ahead of festive seasons sale as a project using tools such as Event Calendar, Discussion Board, Bulletin Board for News, Files Sharing feature, Contact Management facility and Expense Management. In other words, all relevant activities and critical paths are tracked and ticked of as work progresses. They cut down on paperwork and that is a sizable savings, cost wise and time wise
How To Use Ajax Workspace
Greg put on the overall Christmas Sale plan on Ajax Workspace. From the plan, Amy knows that the store decoration has to start and end by mid October.
And as in the past, Amy started her site visits and planned what new items to bring into the store. She added additional tasks that Greg could access to. Some of the tasks require Greg to concur and she then assign Greg and her to execute those tasks.
Amy then put it in Excel worksheet of product details, costs and update the contact details in Contact Management database. As for Greg, this early planning gives him time to manage the budget and cash flow.
The Result
Ajax Workspace is a business focus project management application that works.
Through effective planning, Greg and Amy now have an overview of all the store activities at a glance. Changes made all come with audit trail, and who, where, what, when and how are crystal clear.
From business perspective, Greg and Amy could see their plan their stocks order and time the sales well, thus reducing over commitment on stocks. The suppliers could never be happier because they can also time their orders for timely delivery. Everyone feels that more time is available to focus on his or her main responsibilities.
Most importantly Greg and Amy are very pleased with the way they could run the business.
