Email distribution tool helps Eastern Bag more effectively deliver information

Eastern Bag, a Connecticut-based distributor of paper and packaging products, employs about 260 people and ships approximately 100,000 cases of product each week. The company’s remote sales staff stays connected to critical systems and information, and saves money on paper and printing with the help of Email Report Server.


Information disconnect

Eastern Bag’s sales team of about 55 people was faced with an ongoing challenge: how to tie into the company’s System i applications and the data they contain while making sales calls from the road.


Competitive disadvantage

Sales team members could not remotely access the product, ordering, inventory and delivery information they needed to do their jobs effectively. Even with Internet access, they were unable to retrieve the data that resided on the company’s critical systems. This hurt their ability to close deals quickly and generate revenue.


Information distribution solution

Eastern Bag decided that if its sales team couldn’t pull the information it needed from their systems, they would find a way to push it to them instead. The solution was Email Report Server. The software is a native System i program that automatically delivers data from a System i server to anyone, anywhere via email.


Flexible report and file distribution

The program automatically monitors System i output queues and delivers reports via Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), without the need to manually download reports from the system. Before sending the reports, the software automatically coverts spool files into any of the following formats: ASCII text, RTF, HTML, PDF, PCL, TIF, CSV or popular database and spreadsheet formats, such as Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, and Lotus 1-2-3.


You’ve got mail

Eastern Bag incorporates code into their job streams to email files and reports directly to users. Users get data in their inboxes in Excel or PDF format. Consequently, salespeople get information anywhere they can get email, without the need to log into the company’s critical systems. The email reporting facility also allows Eastern Bag to send customers comprehensive reports.


The benefits are “in the bag.”

The company’s administrative and paper-related costs have been significantly lowered, and the ability to disseminate and use information quickly and more effectively has led to improved sales and higher customer satisfaction.

Email Report Server “allows us to get information into the hands of our staff and customers very quickly and in a very presentable format,” said Jack Jurkowski, CIO at Eastern Bag. “It has really revolutionized the way we print and distribute information. It’s had a very positive effect on our IT operation, and it’s allowed our management to get information quickly and in a format that they can easily digest, manipulate, and distribute to other people.”

 

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