It’s pretty simple to order promotional products for a one-off event if you’re in the marketing department. But if you work in a large organization with multiple locations or departments — and have multiple groups that need branded merchandise — it’s another animal entirely.
Instead of requiring each department to place its own promotional product orders, organizations can aggregate their orders to save a lot of time, money, and hassle. But there’s usually just one catch: streamlining branded merchandise orders in a large organization is hard.
Marketers, procurement, and buyers across your business are probably already strained for time. Coordinating large-scale orders quickly becomes a headache, so what can you do?
Boundless’s proprietary GroupBuy™ technology makes it a cinch to aggregate promotional product orders. Let’s dig into why aggregation is helpful and how aggregated orders work.
The bottom line is that aggregating your merchandise orders saves everyone time and money. When you start aggregating your orders, you’ll enjoy cushy benefits like:
Unless you’re a super small business, GroupBuy makes great sense for promotional swag orders. Every promo provider has its own process, but Boundless’s proprietary GroupBuy feature is truly special.
GroupBuy allows multiple departments in a company to buy into the same promotional product order. All buyers have a time window to put in their order, and all departments or branches can decide what they need. This is great if you want accounting, marketing, sales, and customer service to have the same items on hand without the headaches.
But we know that switching to an aggregated order system comes with a learning curve. Follow these four tips to help your team get the most out of aggregated orders.
The Boundless portal gives you access to thousands of interesting promotional items. The problem is that this can give your employees too many options — and that’s a recipe for inconsistent promotional products.
It’s best to define which products are up for grabs in your GroupBuy store. Whether you want:
This limits employees’ choices to products you’ve pre-approved. That speeds up the ordering process and helps you manage costs while preventing non-brand-standard products from hitting the streets.
GroupBuy simplifies the aggregation process, but you still need to train everyone on how the ordering process works. The last thing you want is for someone to miss the ordering deadline or to order the wrong quantities!
Create documentation that coaches employees through the aggregation process. You can even record your screen as you go through a sample order and provide the recording to all employees. We guarantee you’ll get way fewer “How do I put in an order again?” emails from your team.
Some organizations don’t use a solution like GroupBuy to aggregate their orders. That’s totally fine, but it likely means they’re relying on spreadsheets and the inefficiencies that come with them.
Technology like GroupBuy simplifies the order aggregation process. It cuts out manual ordering and guides everyone on the team through a neat, structured process. It ensures that order requests go to the right people, at the right time, at the right price.
Once the order window passes, GroupBuy will place orders for you and alert you when they’re en route. It’s that easy!
The more orders you place, the more everyone on your team will save. Manufacturers love frequent bulk orders, so over time, there’s a very good chance you’ll enjoy reduced prices on promotional products — while your competitors pay full price.
Order aggregation technology like GroupBuy makes it as easy as pie to order the promotional products your team needs. Without it, you’re stuck ordering your products piecemeal, and that’s a real pain. Instead, add a dose of sanity to your workflow with Boundless GroupBuy™.
You don’t have to go at it alone, either. Work with a Boundless Brand Consultant to set up your order aggregation solution and start saving time and money. See how our technology works.