Introduction

NZ Safety Blackwoods supplies safety equipment, engineering, workwear, hygiene, and packaging through 30 trade centres across New Zealand. The product range includes over 120,000 products and some of the world’s most respected brands. In addition to the trade centres, NZ Safety Blackwoods also offers online purchasing, customised digital catalogues, and an app for customers.

THE CHALLENGES

• Antiquated systems were slow and resource-heavy
  
  
• Existing systems required double handling to complete tasks
  
  
• Slow systems were resulting in lost revenue opportunities (promoting stock with limited quantities and inability to easily make last-minute changes to promote those items with more stock in-hand)
  

THE RESULTS

• Improved efficiencies enabled re-allocation of resources
  
  
• Expanded in-house capability allowed the retirement of the external marketing agency
  
  
• Catalogue production automation
  
  
• Image database delivered speed improvements for search function and easier sharing
  
  
• Improved revenue forecasting per mailer page
  
  
• Improved and more structured processesIncreased agility to facilitate last-minute product substitutions
  

Maria Reinbergen took over the reins as Marketing Manager at NZ Safety Blackwoods following positions at Carters and PlaceMakers. Helium was in use at both previous employers and Maria was sure that Helium would also benefit marketing operations at NZ Safety Blackwoods

The company was experiencing rapid growth and the existing solution, Atlas, wasn’t up to the challenge of speeding up processes and facilitating efficiencies. Maria says: “NZ Safety Blackwoods needed Helium to help bring marketing processes into the 21^st Century. The existing solution was very manual, with the studio building templates from scratch. I knew the benefits Helium would bring so the decision was a no-brainer.”  Maria cites the double-handling required by legacy systems and the resource-heavy methods to produce marketing collateral as major impediments to efficiency improvements. The company also relied on an external marketing agency. 

The deployment of Helium helped to speed up processes through automation and freed up resource. This expanded the marketing department’s capabilities and allowed them to retire the external agency.

Relying solely on in-house resources, Marketing and the studio now deliver comprehensive through-the-line campaigns. This includes catalogues, monthly mailers, POS posters, display ads, and EDMs. Maria’s team also provides information and support to the HR, Sales, and Merchandise teams.

“This is a busy operation with a high throughput of work,” Maria says, “and the automation provided by Helium allows the Merchandising Team to get a lot of extra time to complete their deals and negotiations.” This capability has enabled campaign development to be informed by and responsive to market changes, product availability and competitor activity. 

Efficiencies have also enabled a reallocation of resources in the studio, which allows designers to apply their skills and time to marketing design, resulting in more compelling communications.

Maria also points out the Helium solution enables a greater degree of discipline and control, which are important in an operation that uses a wide range of marketing activities in a competitive and fast-paced environment. Her experience of Helium at NZ safety Blackwoods and previous companies reinforces Helium’s credentials as a game-changer and the benchmark to measure marketing operations against. Maria says that she would recommend Helium to any major retailer.

Studio Manager, Jenny Bennet, echoes Maria’s positive reaction to Helium and welcomes the opportunity the studio now must craft better marketing, saying: “Helium has been great, I can now devote time to delivering a better result and using all my expertise, rather than losing time in manual processes.