Learn how commonsku helped Outreach Promotional Solutions grow their sales by 25% in a year.

Founded in 2012, Outreach Promotional Solutions currently has 4 full time employees, 2 part-time employees, 1 contractor. We have a pretty diverse client base but have had great success targeting nonprofit organizations, government and educational institutions. We consider ourselves more than a promo company – we have a family-owned partner print shop, graphic designers and partnerships to offer digital marketing services.

Before trying commonsku we were using our own excel model for pricing and order management because we weren’t satisfied with the tools available to us in the industry. This worked great for us initially, but as we continued to grow we realized we were spending too much time manually entering data. We wanted a solution that would not only enhance our external views to the customer but also create more efficiencies for them.

Some of the biggest pain points we faced were manual data entry when moving from quote to order, lower ability to manage client follow-ups and share tasks with team members and inconsistent views between quotes and invoices for our customer. We had centralized project management which created an overload on one person and lead to errors. Our invoicing was also slower because we would take their excel system and put it into ESP to create an invoice.

Since joining commonsku in August 2015, we have found that moving from quote to order to invoice is much easier – it is also easier for us to see history on an order and notes on an order. Project management is much easier and there are fewer mistakes on orders. We invoice so much faster because it is a one-click solution to create an invoice. We’ve created many email templates which makes sending different forms quick and easy. We even use commonsku in our marketing efforts, mentioning to our clients that we leverage a best-in-class system that helps us serve them better.

As a business owner, I like the dashboard because it is clean and easy to use. We all religiously use the reminders feature. The reports features allows me as the owner to view activity, analyze numbers and address any issues at a high level. The integration with ESP makes finding products and adding them easy as well and the email system with templates allows us to quickly contact clients.

With commonsku we have been able to shift resources to more value-added activities such as marketing and client outreach. We can more easily set reminders/tasks for team members and they all feel better about managing our to-dos. Our overall team feels more engaged because they like using the software. Our clients are receiving better designed quotes, sales orders, presentations and invoices which makes us look better.

commonsku has helped our sales growth as we’ve grown over 25% ($580K at end of last year to a projected $725K this year). I was able to take a 40 hour a week person and reduced it to 20 hours a week for admin/operational support. In addition, this part-time person also helps with marketing/client outreach, so I’ve been able to reallocate resources, saving us money.