Customization

The combination and appearance in which products are presented to trade can be crucial for their sales success. That means refinements and enhancements are an important topic in the ICT market. Not everyone is set up for such a practical implementation – especially when it comes to larger unit volumes. This is because the effort and expense is considerable, and the processes for refining and assembling certain products, the manufacture and kitting of individual packaging, POS materials and shipping to the sale outlets of the various channels are equally as diverse as they are labour intensive.

On the other hand, projects aimed at digitalisation of schools, public authorities or private sector companies are lucrative, but usually involve a lot of work. These orders are subject to substantial challenges in the technical and logistical fulfilment, especially with regard to available resources:

The contractor usually has to manoeuvre an unusually large amount of products. He must deliver them on schedule to many different locations ─ after implementing the special requirements for the devices. Such requirements can greatly complicate the task, even if it is actually ‘only’ about mobile devices. In this case, the extra requests can range from physical device protection and uploading of images to unique security and allocation labels for the various batches and user groups. In many cases, the individual devices must also be engraved or convey messages, for example with a logo, a text sleeve or a special campaign sticker on the packaging.

To plan, implement and deliver all these requirements by the set deadlines requires diverse support from various service providers and an insane amount of coordination, because the schedule for these projects is usually very tight.