Bob Lilly Promotions
Promotional agency Bob Lilly Promotions saves time and money implementing QAD Digital Commerce for its online company store clients.
About Bob Lilly Promotions
A promotional agency supports all its clients’ online stores on a single platform
Since 1999, Bob Lilly Promotions has been providing its clients impactful and creative integrated marketing solutions. From day one, the company has taken on the mission to be more than simply a vendor to its clients, but also an irreplaceable extension of their business. Bob Lilly’s offerings span an array of fields—from print and creative services to promotional merchandise and fulfillment and delivery capabilities— with its eCommerce company stores being a critical part of its business model.
The eCommerce technology Bob Lilly was using to power its online company stores had previously consisted of a combination of various solutions from multiple vendors. But at a certain point, those solutions were no longer meeting the demands of its clients’ business. The company decided it was time to migrate all its sites under one provider, so it started shopping for a new eCommerce platform that could meet the requirements to manage all of its online stores.
“I had investigated multiple options, but was underwhelmed,” says John Boyd, senior manager of program operations at Bob Lilly. “We had several special requirements that most providers could not support.”
Where most providers couldn’t hold up to Bob Lilly’s online stores’ complex needs, QAD Digital Commerce had robust capabilities that could meet and exceed the company’s expectations.
Ultimately, Bob Lilly partnered with QAD Digital Commerce to implement its eCommerce platform for all of its online company store clients.
The Challenge
Multiple old disparate e-commerce systems not meeting business needs
**Bob Lilly was using a number of digital commerce solutions from multiple vendors to power its various online stores.
The Solution
Soon after, Bob Lilly partnered with QAD Digital Commerce to implement its eCommerce platform for its online company store clients. “Once we made the decision to partner with QAD, the process was quick and seamless,” Boyd says.
At the outset, QAD Digital Commerce reviewed all of Bob Lilly’s current sites and discussed the company’s unique needs, which included a warehouse, API and SSO integration. The QAD Digital Commerce development team investigated Bob Lilly’s challenges and offered solutions other providers had not been able or willing to.
“We were then assigned a dedicated account manager, to help us with onboarding, and scheduling the migration of all our current sites over to QAD Digital Commerce,” Boyd says.
For Bob Lilly’s public site that would showcase its brand, the company reviewed all the available QAD Digital Commerce templates and discussed the look-and-feel with the team. Then Bob Lilly selected which suppliers it wanted to list on the site, as well as its desired margin.
“From there, QAD did all the heavy lifting in populating the site and setting up custom URLs for each of our account managers to share with their customers,” Boyd says.
The QAD Digital Commerce development team also worked with Bob Lilly’s warehouse provider to set up the warehouse inventory integration. Once this was complete, the development team began working on the custom development needed to support Bob Lilly’s special requirements while strategically migrating each of its current sites over to the new solution.
The Benefits
All online stores of clients are on a single platform, saving administrative time and money
All of Bob Lilly’s clients’ online stores are now supported by QAD Digital Commerce’s single platform, which has cut down on administrative time. Bob Lilly now has full control over the look-and-feel of its sites and has confidence that they are always up to date with the latest technology and security protocols.
“We have had hack attempts with our sites, but they have never been able to get past the site’s security measures,” Boyd says. “I don’t feel confident that would have been the case with some QAD Digital Commerce competitors.”
In addition, Bob Lilly did a full integration with ASI SmartBooks for both order and inventory integration. This development has streamlined the company’s internal systems eliminating many manual processes.
“This was a very large project and the QAD Digital Commerce development team did a good job of scoping out our requirements in conjunction with ASI to successfully deploy integration,” Boyd says.
And over time, the platform has continued to adapt to Bob Lilly’s ever-growing needs. When a need arises that the platform can’t support, QAD provides alternative solutions or handles development as necessary to support those needs.
QAD Digital Commerce was formerly known as WebJaguar.*
“This was a very large project and the QAD Digital Commerce development team did a good job of scoping out our requirements in conjunction with ASI to successfully deploy integration.”