Sales & Marketing Interests

DI Solution Helps Geiger Brothers Manage Multiple Inventories

Headquarted in Maine, Geiger Brothers, Inc. is a manufacturer, supplier, and distributor of custom catalogs, customized promotional products (25,000 to choose from), marketing packages, calendars, planners, and the Farmers' Almanac.

Geiger Bros. distributes products to approximately 125,000 customers a year. Included in their customer base are corporate clients, such as Federal Express, who have purchased a "custom fulfillment package." The package is a distribution service that Geiger Bros. provides. They will manufacture, stock, take orders for, ship, and track promotional products for large corporations. Those clients who purchase a custom fulfillment package receive five customized DI-Diver reports each month detailing sales activity. Six people at Geiger Bros. have been using DI-Diver on their desktops for the past year to create internal accounting reports, manage inventories, and provide reports to corporate clients.

Two years ago, Geiger Bros. was faced with a reporting problem. The old PC brand report writer ran too slowly on the new AS/400. It would take all weekend to run reports and they still wouldn't have the information they needed. Geiger Bros. opted to implement a solution to maintain the superior service and inventory control that has made them one of the most progressive companies in the promotional products industry.

"DI-Diver had the speed factor and functionality we needed in order to generate many complex, unique reports," says Michael Plourde, Assistant Manager of Operations. Plourde uses DI-Diver to create internal accounting reports, as well as manage inventories and provide hundreds of monthly sales reports to forty-five corporate clients who purchased a fulfillment package. "Jobs are enhanced because DI-Diver gives people what they need to get access to. It also allows us to provide a valuable service." Plourde oversees the distribution center and keeps a close watch on all inventory, purchasing, pricing, shipping, and claims processing.

Different clients want different reports that are unique to their data. DI-Diver allows Plourde to customize and tweak reports according to what clients want. For example, a client may want a unique calculation in a Usage Report, which shows an account of the number of units sold by month on any given item and total sales. Shipment Reports detail when the order was received, the items ordered, shipping address, and a variety of summary information. Plourde will also generate complex Response Analysis Reports for mail order clients. By collecting catalog source codes, and finding out what causes people to order (price sensitivity or a free giveaway, for example), he creates reports that clients use to guide pricing structures and product offerings. "If a person understands the organizational structure of the company data, DI-Diver is very easy to use. It helps people in their jobs, particularly accounting, because you can really see the data that's transferred over," Plourde explains.

Data for the entire Geiger Bros. warehouse, including separate inventories (for fulfillment packages), is collected through invoices and orders. Carolyn Gauthier, Programmer, builds and maintains Models that users access through Microsoft Windows 95 clients. Gauthier says that time spent on maintenance is low because she has established a rhythm with the way Models are built. Each of the twelve Models is different, but generally speaking, there are three categories of Models: Order Models, Invoice Models, and Order Report Models. Dimensions in the Models include "warehouse," "product group," "account group," "order number," "invoice number," "customer account group," "product/ warehouse," "invoice order," "invoice line," and "month." Users at their desktops are able to dive into Dimensions and navigate through data to find and organize information they need. Every weekend, DI Solution updates Models with the most recent data. "It's a good tool. It does everything we want it to do for the most part," says Gauthier.

Future plans include updating to version 3.0, so users can take advantage of DI-Diver's new timeseries capabilities, and Gauthier will use DI Solution to build analysis-friendly data marts for more people to access. "One thing I've noticed about Dimensional Insight," Plourde remarks, "is that they are continually enhancing their products."