An Overview of Freedom Greeting Card Company Inc

Freedom Greeting Card Company Inc. (www.freedomgreetings.com) is a greeting card company that recently decided to create a website that would provide wholesale and retail customers with online services (Aspin, 2005). In the past, the company relied entirely on fax and phone orders. It grew into a multi-billion dollar business without even having a web site. However, as customer began demanding faster service and the industry expanded, Freedom†s leaders realized that they would be eliminated by the competition if they failed to give the customers what they wanted (Aspin, 2005). The Internet seemed to be the offered a viable solution to keep in contact with a large customer base. Jay Levitt, president of Freedom Greeting, aimed to create a solution that would be easy to use and effectively boost productivity, while saving money on traditional methods of reacting to increases in demand such as staff and infrastructure expansion. Levitt looked into the possibility of extending his existing business applications. Since 1999, the company was a customer of Aspin Management Systems, a software house based in the United Kingdom (Aspin, 2005). Freedom had invested in AMSolveâ„ ¢, an accounting and back office system which the company produces. The system handles many area of Freedom†s operation, including account ledgers, stock control, order processing and fulfillment. Levitt decided to extend the company†s services to the Internet. The company found a solution that would give trade customers an easy to use method of quickly ordering products, without the need for customers to invest in expensive applications to interface with the company†s server (Aspin, 2005). This solution is a website that provides a catalogue of over five thousand products that can be ordered by industry customers. Customers login and browse the products, adding items or requesting stock through the Grid Ordering process. According to Aspin Intercative (2005): â€Å"The customer or agent specifies the grids and pocket to re-order and the system displays the available stock for pockets as specified in AMSolve. The user then reviews the order, makes any adjustment to quantity and clicks a button to place the order. There is no need to enter any payment details and the order is encrypted and sent directly to Freedom†s AMSolve server for processing. Once the order is placed notification is sent via email, however, an agent representing a client or the customer themselves can log into the website at any time and place, and check that the order is in the system and once shipped, they can check its delivery status.†