Staples Advantage

Staples is the world’s largest company in office products operating in 27 countries worldwide. Originated from a single store, Staples expanded to over 2,000 stores focused on individual consumers, 24/7 mail order services for small and medium sized companies and an organisation of dedicated account teams providing business to business expertise for large and international companies, called Staples Advantage.

Staples Advantage handles a product range consisting of about 13,000 items. Agreements are made with customers on tailor made assortments, prices, terms and conditions e.g. for delivery. This is done centrally for international customers and de-centrally for local customers.

Message traffic through EasyOrder

Staples Advantage customers can choose between several methods of placing an order. All formats of online message traffic go through the internet ordering application EasyOrder. The B2B version of EasyOrder is up and running in twelve countries. A significant proportion of the orders are placed through this application on a daily basis and are passed on for further processing - after being validated - to the business applications of the national Staples Advantage companies. At Staples Advantage, EasyOrder communicates with various ERP packages, such as Baan in Germany and SAP in the Netherlands.

The Dutch establishment of Staples Advantage has been using EasyOrder since 1999 and the English establishment in Birmingham has been doing so since 2001. More than 60% of the order stream in these two countries goes through EasyOrder.

The following are the reasons why Staples Advantage is using EasyOrder as an integral internet ordering application for all its European establishments:

• proven application quality in the Netherlands and in the UK
• scalability: there is no limit to the number of simultaneous users of the application
• the quality of the application
• the feature-rich basic application

The additional options, such as cooperation with modules such as SAP OCI, Oracle Apps Tapin, Ariba Punch Out, I2 Punch Out, etc are also important factors.

www.staplesadvantage.eu