Established in 1975, USI, Inc. has grown into one of the leading suppliers of lamination film and equipment in the United States .  With a product line that includes roll and pouch machines, binding equipment, photo ID systems, mounting and display boards, plus office accessories—and with separate divisions catering to commercial enterprises, government entities and educational facilities, this family-owned company has thrived for over thirty years.

Headquartered in Madison , CT , and with a major distribution facility in Phoenix , AZ as well, USI relies heavily on catalog, phone and internet sales to drive business.

Operating for years within an HP 3000 environment, the company recently switched to an open systems solution.

More information about USI can be found at www.usi-laminate.com, and on their divisional Web sites, www.usieducation.com and www.usigovernment.com.

The Challenge

Like many upward trending companies, USI’s marketing campaigns were working well, transactions were up and business was booming.  But which products were leading these trends?  Which region of the country?  And what did all those new and repeat customers look like?  Though USI knew they could accomplish just about anything when in came to lamination, they had to admit that digging deeper into their transaction data had become a truly sticky situation.

Carolyn Chappell, USI’s MIS director, described it well.  “From a strictly top level view…volume and revenue…it was thumbs up all the way,” she said.  “But when it came to validating our marketing campaigns and gaining visibility into our customers using our Ecometry data, we were really at a loss.  Plus, we really lacked from not being able to establish relationships between the various data elements.”

Simple reporting kept USI’s MIS department working overtime too, with standard reports draining IT resources and ad hoc reports taking hours, even days, to design.  “By the time our users got some of these reports,” Chappell continued, “the information was yesterday’s news.”

But the biggest challenge for USI emerged when, seeing increased Internet sales and realizing the potential for future e-commerce, they decided to upgrade their Web site.  Up to then they had been taking Web orders and entering them manually, which posed a major scalability issue if they wanted to grow this channel.  Yet USI had a reputation for doing the job right.  And doing e-commerce right meant integrating all their various systems and trying to keep data accurate and in synch—all in real time.

The Solution

After considering many different options, speaking directly to companies that had tried a range of both in-house and commercial solutions, USI chose Taurus Software’s Ecomedate, DataBridger and Analysis Suite products.  The real tipping point came when they learned about DataBridger’s built-in functionality for Web site integration.  “We’d looked around and seen some real nightmare situations with other products,” said Carrie Modon, USI’s eCommerce Market Manager.  “In one case, the so-called solution brought down the company’s entire Web site.  Not good.”

USI was also looking forward to greater visibility into their Ecometry data by migrating it into the Ecomedate data foundation, with its easy-to-access pre-mapped fields—the first step toward gaining that long sought comprehensive single-view of their customers.  (No more wondering who was buying what.)  Plus, with the pre-built dashboards and other tools provided by Analysis Suite, reporting time would be slashed, and USI’s “internal customers” longer be clamoring for information.

The Result

USI did upgrade their Web site, just as planned.  They’re not only enjoying a substantial increase in Internet sales; but since eliminating manual entry they’ve also had no problem scaling their operations accordingly.   

With their Ecometry data in the Ecomedate foundation, now they know precisely where to find the essential data they need for analysis and better, faster business decisions.  For example, when USI was experiencing challenges with its Phoenix distribution center for a time, they were able to quickly reassign those orders to their Connecticut headquarters’ shipping facility.  “Just trying to get the ZIP codes for a group of transactions would have been a huge headache under our old system,” said Pete Frega, USI’s Director of Operations.  “But with Ecomedate, it was no problem.”

What’s more, Ecomedate and Analysis Suite are making life much easier for MIS Director Chappell and her efforts to give managers the critical, up-to-the-minute business information they need to keep USI growing.  “It’s just a night-and-day difference,” she said.

For more information about DataBridger, Ecomedate, Analysis Suite and other Taurus products visit www.taurus.com.