Ignify eCommerce Implementation Customer Solution Case Study

Ignify Creates a Transformational Shopping Experience for Restaurant Supply Provider

Overview
Country or Region: United States Customer Profile Clipper Direct is a global foodservice supply provider that offers tools, utensils, accessories, and apparel to commercial restaurants and cruise lines. Many high-profile businesses turn to Clipper Direct to fulfill their supply needs. Business Situation Looking to further the companys growth by expanding its customer base, Clipper Direct sought to make their products and services more accessible to a wider range of companies. To achieve this goal, Clipper Direct required a software solution that could provide their customers with a superior shopping experience. Solution With its in-depth catalog capabilities, functional scalability, and unique order form purchasing model, Ignify eCommerce delivered a compelling, user-friendly shopping experience that sets Clipper Direct apart from their competitors. The solutions seamless integration with the companys software systems and its robust marketing campaign capabilities ensure continued operational efficiency and business development. Benefits Interoperability with existing software systems creates effective and harmonious business management The ability to have multiple stores on one platform ensures smooth, stable growth Enhanced opportunities for marketing and promotional activities

With the Ignify eCommerce software, Ignify has positioned itself as the primary enabler for creating a transformational shopping experience for professionals in the global foodservice industry.
Lawrence Snapp, President & COO, Clipper Direct

Based in Carson, CA, Clipper Direct is the premier source for providing commercial foodservice supplies to clients throughout the globe. Numbering such heavyweight restaurant corporations as Burger King, California Pizza Kitchen, Outback Steakhouse, In-NOut, and many more among their customer list, this vertically integrated distributor sought to enhance their visibility to the broader market by increasing the accessibility of their quality products and great prices, and to provide their customers with a superior user experience for online purchases. With Ignify eCommerce, Clipper Direct offered clients a compelling, easy-to-use purchasing interface and tailored catalog that is unique to the foodservice retail industry, allowing for up to a 70% reduction in time needed for their customers to find products and enter orders. Since Ignify eCommerce enabled Clipper Direct to provide smaller and emerging chain restaurants the same access to the products and prices that the company supplies to its billion dollar corporations, Clipper Direct has experienced a 90% greater market reach.

Situation

Solution
Through Clipper Directs multi-year relationship with Ignify on previous projects, the company was exposed to the capabilities that the Ignify eCommerce solution delivered, and was well-aware of the many implementations that Ignify performed for other businesses. We saw the Ignify eCommerce platform as something thats proven on the marketplace, said Snapp. The functionalities that this software offered met our business needs and solved the challenges we were facing, so we decided that it was the right solution for us. Leveraging the in-depth catalog capabilities of Ignify eCommerce, Clipper Direct is able to offer detailed, visually appealing product pages that highlight the superior items available in their inventory, giving their customers the best sense of what the company offers. With the high-quality product images, the ability to zoom in on product images, and the extensive product descriptions for each item within the catalog, Clipper Direct provides an attractive and informative shopping experience for their clients. I do think that as part of the ultrapremium user experience, everything matters, said Snapp. From the state-of-theart photography we use for product images to the detailed product descriptions, we ensure that the catalog experience for our customers is far superior to the industry standard. The scalability of the solution also allows Clipper Direct to tailor catalogs specific to certain clients, enabling the company to provide products specific to particular audiences regardless of the customers size. The ability to tailor the products for a certain audience is critical, and part of the user experience that we required, said Snapp. As needed in the foodservice world, customers want to see a custom catalog and price list in

We at Clipper Direct see the relationship with Ignify as a steppingstone towards our future. As we develop our business more, we see expanded uses of the features and functionalities that Ignify eCommerce offers.
Lawrence Snapp President & COO Clipper Direct

The commercial foodservice supply dealer, Clipper Direct, provides its customers with the quality supplies, tools, and utensils that a restaurant needs to keep in business, and its reputation as the premier source for restaurant supplies has allowed the company to establish an impressive customer roster that includes giants of the restaurant industry Pizza Hut, Olive Garden, Corner Bakery Caf, and Jack in the Box are just a few such customers who turn to Clipper Direct to fulfill their supply needs. But despite already calling a number of highprofile restaurants their clients, Clipper Direct sought to continue expanding their customer roll by capturing the attention of a wider range of prospective clients. Since we serve the biggest and the best brands worldwide, we wanted to make our products available to the broader market, said Lawrence Snapp, president and COO of Clipper Direct. We wanted to showcase to other restaurants the fact that we offer better products for better prices. In order to better reach out to their prospect pool, Clipper Direct understood the necessity of offering a powerful, comprehensive shopping experience for people searching and purchasing items from the Clipper Direct website. Finding a software solution that could deliver a superior user experience was a strict functional requirement for the company. An absolutely critical requirement for us was to create a user experience that was ultra-premium, relative to other restaurant supply retailer options for commercial restaurants in the world, said Snapp. And with customers and distributors located across six different continents, we needed a solution that offered interactional accessibility to both our products and prices.

Weve differentiated the use of the Ignify eCommerce platform relative to anyone else in the restaurant supply industry with our order form model. The units of measures we offer customers for ordering product quantities is something completely new to the industry.
Melissa Zellner Direct of Special Projects and Marketing Clipper Direct

front of them. Ignify eCommerce allows any single restaurant the choice of seeing just their products when they log in. The ability to scale up or scale down according to the size of the customers company supports Clipper Direct in creating more opportunities for targeting potential customers in a widerranging market. We essentially are offering the products that we currently supply to billion dollar chains to a 90% larger market size, because everyone from a mom-and-pop restaurant to a small chain to an emerging chain can access those same products and prices, said Snapp. Were allowing the smaller restaurants and smaller chains to buy like a billion dollar chain. In addition to offering their customers an aesthetically pleasing overview of the restaurant supplies, tools, and accessories in stock, what truly sets Clipper Direct apart from their competitors in terms of user interface is the unique order form structure that makes purchasing items a simple, timely, and cost-effective process. Weve differentiated the use of the Ignify eCommerce platform relative to anyone else in the foodservice industry with our order form model, said Melissa Zellner, director of special projects and marketing for Clipper Direct. The units of measures we offer customers for ordering product quantities is something completely new to the industry. Were one of the first companies thats really trying to offer savings at a bulk level. With this order form model, a restaurant can pick whichever quantities they want to order a product in whether they need a product to be ordered in cases, or if they need to order different quantities of the same product (such as ordering quantities of different sizes of coats, aprons, etc.) and then they simply place their order on one page. Customers no longer have to worry about going through

lengthy, time-consuming ordering processes, said Snapp. No one in our industry has this purchasing interface. With this breakthrough offering, we once again show our commitment to providing our customers with an ultra-premium shopping experience. In fact, Clipper Directs easy and efficient ordering process has trimmed down the time needed to find products and enter orders by up to 70%. We realize that with restaurants, time is money, said Snapp. It was therefore imporant for us to build the right interface for enabling the fastest shopping experience on the Internet for restaurants.

Benefits
Interoperability with Existing Systems One of the key requirements that Clipper Direct was searching for in an ecommerce solution was integration with the companys ERP system. Finding a solution that offered proven interoperability with good ERP systems was crucial, said Snapp. Ignify eCommerce certainly fulfilled this condition by seamlessly integrating with our ERP system. With this integration, the sales orders, purchasing, and shipping and delivery information that Clipper Direct receives from customers through Ignify eCommerce flows smoothly into their ERP, allowing for increased efficiency of business operations and complete oversight over the companys backend processes. In addition to integrating with the ERP system that manages the companys backend data, Ignify eCommerce also carried the advantage of integrating with Clipper Directs third-party tax calculation application. Ignify eCommerce allows Clipper Direct to incorporate the tax calculation models of this application into their ecommerce transactions, showing on customers invoices the tax calculations that their purchases entailed. We have built a

The marketing campaign management, inclusive of the features that it offers, and the campaign measurement tools were important factors in our decision to go with the Ignify eCommerce platform.
Lawrence Snapp President & COO Clipper Direct

kind of triumvirate between the Ignify eCommerce platform, our cloud-based tax table reference system, and our ERP system, said Snapp. We enjoy the harmony that those three systems working together has created. Multi-Store Capabilities on One Platform Although the current economic climate has presented difficult business challenges to companies, the foodservice industry is booming. In general, competitive online restaurant supply retailers are experiencing hyper growth despite the sluggish economy, said Snapp. With Clipper Direct continuing to develop its operations and expand its customer base, the promise of holding multiple divisions and stores on one single platform made Ignify eCommerce a particularly attractive ecommerce option. That was another reason why we went with Ignify eCommerce, said Snapp. We look forward to using the platform for our marquee customers. With the multi-store approach that Ignify eCommerce offers, one particular benefit is that Clipper Direct is able to more easily create and deploy the sites it builds for customers. We do make custom sites for some of our clients, so now that were familiar with the Ignify platform, its going to make it a lot easier for us to deploy other sites, said Snapp. And again, the impressive scalability of the solution allows us to scale the sites up or down according to our customers requirements. Enhanced Marketing Opportunities With the Ignify eCommerce Marketing Module, Clipper Direct experiences the easy creation of marketing and promotional activities, as well as full control over managing and tracking their marketing campaigns. We are excited to delve into the

Marketing Module, and to discover and utilize the marketing functionalities that will assist us in realizing full marketing potential, said Snapp. Since this module supports unlimited promotions, the company can quickly create virtually any kind of special discount or coupon that they wish to offer customers. For example, Clipper Direct can offer shipping, order, or item coupons, and the flexibility of the solution also enables them to create and offer a particular special discount or coupon to one specific group of customers, and a different special discount to another group. The solutions out-of-the-box reporting capabilities also allow Clipper Direct to view either summary or detailed information on each individual marketing campaign, giving the company total command of marketing activities. The marketing campaign management, inclusive of the features that it offers, and the campaign measurement tools were important factors in our decision to go with the Ignify eCommerce platform, said Snapp.

For More Information

For more information about Clipper Direct, call (855) 853-4732 or visit www.clipperdirect.com. For more information about Ignify products and services, call 1 (888) IGNIFY5 or email sales@ignify.com or visit the Web site at: www.ignify.com For more information about Ignify eCommerce visit www.Ignify.com/eCommerce

2011 Ignify Inc. This case study is for informational purposes only. IGNIFY MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published August 2011