Refocusing Technology Efforts Towards Innovation

American Greetings is a century-old company and industry leader in social expression, employing 15,000 part-time merchandisers charged with maintaining in-store inventory, managing routes and collecting sales data for product in company-owned retail stores and through retail partners. 

American Greetings turned to MCPC with these business priorities:

  • Refocus IT on innovation
  • Outsource day-to-day operations to free-up staff, lower operational and infrastructure costs and provide higher service levels

American Greetings turned to MCPC with these IT priorities:

  • Replace aging Telxon technology that was costly to maintain and had aging software

How MCPC responded:

  • Developed a comprehensive hardware and software lifecycle management program focused on the merchandiser experience.
  • Helped American Greetings select and procure hardware, understanding the features and attributes that were needed to replace Telxon devices and integrate and certify new software into the newly selected hardware.
  • Planned and delivered a pilot program to more than 250 merchandisers, providing day-to-day software support and advanced hardware replacement of damaged services.
  • Kitted more than five different components into a single shipment, updated AGC’s CMDB, provided an asset management database and enrolled devices in AGC’s MDM solution.
  • Performed real-time updates to MAC alerts when devices were moved between merchandisers. MCPC scorecard collected and reported critical support metrics needed to drive continuous improvement.

Why American Greetings values MCPC

  • MCPC provided optimal device and software selection
  • MCPC utilized a technology logistics center near AGC’s headquarters for deployment staging and advanced hardware replacement
  • MCPC integrated support through its Operations Service Center for seamless hardware and software support
  • MCPC provided universal asset management for devices and  accessories
  • MCPC oversaw day-to-day service delivery and service levels