I’m going to show you how much of an impact Glide had on Sticker it. A business that prints custom stickers.
These stats have been taken from when Sticker it was a small business, with around 10 people and processing 25 orders/day.
The savings I’m about to show you happened within weeks of Sticker it first using Glide.
So Glide had a huge impact, fast.
First, let’s look at a summary of the numbers:
For Sticker it, the results will surprise you.
They have a reasonably high number of lower-value orders (~£120 on average).
Whereas some custom product/service businesses have much higher average order values and fewer orders. Take vehicle wrapping or sign fitters, for example.
With Sticker it, the big savings came from cutting out many small tasks.
Which may be the same for you.
What we’ve found is that trivial tasks get overlooked. And this tends to be common throughout many businesses.
Tasks such as naming files. Finding files. Passing customer feedback on proofs to designers. The list goes on.
And here’s a wild statistic.
If you save just 10 minutes each working day, that adds up to 1 week saved per year. 🤯
So Glide also focuses on the tons of mini-tasks people do. Cut these out, and we’re saving your team months every year.
2 weeks a year sounds like a lot. And it is! Especially when we’re only talking about processing 25 orders a day.
We’ve added all the maths below to show we haven’t made this up.
But first, I’ll explain in detail exactly what ‘sending proofs’ involves,
Here are the steps:
This was the process before Glide:
If the customer requires changes or approves their artwork, this then happens:
The time that all took was 55 seconds. That’s purely customer service time. No designer time.
The process with Glide doesn’t involve a customer service person at all. The only thing that happens is the designer needs to click the ‘Send proofs’ button.
The customer then automatically receives an email & SMS asking them to review their proof(s).
The customer can either accept or reject the proof(s).
If they accept, the order goes straight to manufacturing.
If they reject, the order goes back into ‘Changes needed’ along with the customer comments to be actioned.
So we’ll say this takes 1 second using the Glide system.
Which is over-estimating but good for comparison purposes.
This makes the time saved 54 seconds per order.
Sticker it was processing 25 orders per day, giving a saving of:
If you scaled that to 100 orders per day. The numbers are staggering:
Let’s look at the next time savings.
File naming seems so simple, but it takes deceptively long. The designer must also find where to save the files and create folders before starting.wed
This time adds up quickly.
To be very clear, this process happens after the designer has worked on the proof and before the proofs are sent to the customer.
Here is the process before Glide was installed:
The old way
Time taken: 1 minute 44 seconds.
After using Glide
Time taken: <30 seconds
Therefore, the time saved per order line item = 1 minute 14 seconds
Working off 30 line items per day (from 25 orders), that’s a saving of:
If you scaled that to 100 orders per day. The numbers are staggering:
Now for the final example in this case study.
We’ve seen time saved for customer service people and designers. Now, to show you how Sticker it saved time for its production department.
Here, we’re comparing the time it takes to get a file to the printer using Glide vs a manual method using email, Trello, and a file system - quite typical of many businesses.
Here’s the process pre-Glide:
Time taken: 1 minute 24 seconds
Here’s the process in Glide:
Nothing. It’s all automatic.
Time taken: 0. Zero. Nothing. Zilch. Automatic.
This results in a saving of 1 minute 24 seconds per order line item.
With Sticker it processing 30 order line items per day (from 25 orders), Glide gives savings of:
If you scaled that to 100 orders per day:
As you can see, the time saved is staggering. So much, in fact, it makes Glide a no-brainer from a time-saving perspective.
And we’re comparing Glide to pretty good systems. Email + Trello + Google Drive isn’t a terrible setup.
It’s just slow!
There are other aspects to consider, too.
If a job takes less time and is semi-automated, it has even bigger reductions on the total elapsed time it takes to fulfil an order.
This gives a much better customer experience. Which means they’re more likely to come back.
Add to that, reordering is easier in Glide. It’s a double-positive.
Glide has helped Sticker it to grow very fast year over year whilst keeping overheads low and the team small.
Margins have soared, allowing more investment into better machines, training the team, and acquiring more customers to grow faster.
We hope this detailed analysis has helped to show you the impact of Glide on a business that sells customised products.
We hope we can do the same for you!
