Case Study Pitney Bowes

 

Introduction

Pitney Bowes is a global technology company providing commerce solutions in the areas of ecommerce, shipping, mailing and financial services. Clients around the world, including 90 per cent of the Fortune 500 businesses, rely on the accuracy and precision delivered by Pitney Bowes solutions, analytics, and APIs in the areas of ecommerce fulfillment, shipping and returns, cross-border ecommerce, office mailing and shipping, presort services and financing. For 100 years Pitney Bowes has been innovating and delivering technologies that remove the complexity of getting commerce transactions precisely right. 

Pitney Bowes Australia and New Zealand also runs a successful online store selling inks, toners, machine parts and other proprietary and 3rd party office and shipping products.

Business Problem

Working with ComCloud, Pitney Bowes Australia and New Zealand first launched its webstores in 2010 with the intention of moving manual sales processes online. It mainly sold proprietary inks and other consumables for its equipment and also expanded to sell 3rd party products like paper, envelopes, binding and shredding supplies. It saw early success with strong sales and internal support helping to drive customers to order online.

In 2016, Pitney Bowes started on a digital transformation journey. The existing ComCloud platform needed to be expanded to support internal process efficiencies and drive further growth in online sales.

Solution

To support the digital transformation, Pitney Bowes created a new drive to web strategy that aimed to increase traffic to the store; increase the creation of new customer accounts; increase orders and drive repeat visits; and reduce staff time spent manually processing orders.

Partnering with ComCloud, Pitney Bowes undertook a series of projects to optimise the webstores. These projects included: 

  • Adding all proprietary and 3rd party products to the web platform.
  • Updating and improving product descriptions, images and templates for customer communications such as invoices.
  • Implementing a new front-end design to modernise the store and a self-serve customer portal to improve the experience.
  • Integrating the web platform with Pitney Bowes systems to automate the order process from cart to warehouse.
  • Implementing strict security and anti-fraud controls.
  • Creating a Staff Ordering Portal to assist customers with setting up accounts and demonstrating how they can easily purchase online for future transactions.
  • Adding a Live Chat option for customers to easily ask questions about account set up and product information.

 

Results

By implementing a strong drive to web strategy, focusing on web platform improvements and the customer journey, Pitney Bowes saw significant improvements. These include an increase in web traffic by 243% from 2016 to 2019 and an increase of 356% in new accounts created. There was also a significant increase in the number of orders and average order values, leading to 42% growth in revenue generated via the webstores. The automation of the backend order process through web platform integration resulted in a reduction of four departments handling each order down to one department, leading to internal efficiencies and time savings.