The marketing team for a Fortune 500 computer manufacturing firm was continually re-evaluating their current product offerings and adjusting them as needed to drive new initiatives or to keep up with the latest market trends. This included price changes, promotional offers, changes to existing products, and new product introduction; all driven by consumer demands. Every product configuration promoted by the marketing team had to also comply with the valid configuration options defined by the company's system engineers. Bottom line, what the marketing team promoted had to be technically feasible

Prior to introducing a new product offering or sales promotion to customers, the product's technical configuration, pricing, and method of distribution all had to be validated and approved by various groups within the company. A complex workflow of information gathering, review and approval had to be coordinated by the product's manager. The updated information was then officially published to all the appropriate sales pipelines. The business process used by the client to manage these modifications involved a great deal of manual analysis and data entry into spreadsheets. This manual process caused significant delays in the release of new product introductions and sales promotions. The client needed a more efficient environment for maintaining and distributing product updates.

Automate the process using a shared application that could "push" information out to the appropriate team members. ADC consultants developed a centralized web-based application to manage product, pricing, and sales promotion information, and prepare it for distribution to hundreds of customer e-commerce portals in under 120 days. The new system automatically identifies changes in product data, routes the information to the appropriate managers and maintains a task list for users to review and submit for approval/publishing.

By reducing the amount of time required to maintain and distribute product and promotion data and minimizing opportunities for human error, this solution reduced product management time and reduced the cost of bringing the client's products to market. This solution allows the client's marketing, finance, and engineering teams to more rapidly price, configure and merchandise the company's products. Based on the success experienced by the initial user base, the solution provided by ADC was adopted by additional divisions within the company.