Mason Zimbler

Mason Zimbler is a creative integrated digital marketing agency, specialising in working with technology organisations.

Situation

Their client, a highly innovative manufacturing company with more than 55,000 products based on 40-plus core technologies, uses third-party distributors to sell their products. They were looking for a way to incentivise these distributors to sell products to new customers.

Their existing solution required considerable internal resource to administrate the programme and the distributors were frustrated in that once they had submitted their sales numbers, nothing happened and they felt it was a ‘black hole’.

Solution

Mason Zimbler was tasked with producing a new incentive site that would keep the distributors involved and active within the site, whilst significantly reducing the internal administrative burden.

 An innovative idea for a system based on the cockpit of an aircraft was created, with competing sales displayed as a radar monitor. Teams with particularly good sales were automatically promoted to have a cockpit of a more advanced aircraft such as from a Cessna to a 737.

Ballard Chalmers was selected by Mason Zimbler to architect, build, implement and maintain the system.

One of the biggest issues from the outset was working out how to bring thousands of product codes and specifications into an easy to use format. Ballard Chalmers understood the client’s complex business processes and was able to structure the site accordingly and present the data in a simple and easy to understand format.

The cockpit was developed in Flash, backed up with .NET and SQL Server. The whole system is Internet (cloud) enabled so it can be accessed from the distributors and by the sales team while they are on the road. Back office screens are provided to enable the verification of sales data and to automatically assign monthly prizes to the winning teams.

Outcome

The system was incredibly successful, with three additional departments adopting the same solution to provide incentives to their distributors. 

“Ballard Chalmers brought the whole concept to life. They rapidly grasped the complexity of the business processes involved and created an easy to use tool that has since been expanded significantly. Ballard Chalmers are the experts you can rely on to deliver. They are easy to work with and cost-effective – a fantastic extension to the team,” said the Managing Director at Mason Zimbler.