Federated Group

A wholly-owned subsidiary of The Federated Group

Federated Group

Location:

Arlington Heights, IL

Founded:

1995 as Federated Design

Clients:

Retail grocery, food service, drug and convenience stores

Primary Work:

Retail packaging design

Packaging Efficiency

Federated Group is a sales and marketing company in the foodservice, drug, grocery and convenience store business. As a part of their service, they provide marketing, branding and package design for a number of industries.

With Workgroups, Federated Group has an end-to-end record of every project. Account managers initially open a new job number in Workgroups’ Virtual Ticket module, which has a customized packaging checklist form that ensures that the account manager provides all necessary information for designers to do their jobs. Designers and production staff begin work based on the information contained in Virtual Ticket and integrated another module called Job Manager to track their time for each project in which they participate. DiFrisco adds, "We use Workgroups to manage the entire packaging design project, from creative through production, including coordination with the printers who will actually produce the packaging."

DiFrisco has also found Workgroups to be an important management tool. He says, "We expect 80% to 90% efficiency from our staff. I can easily see and evaluate each staff member's activities on a daily basis, including what they were doing in terms of design, production, mock-ups, printing and more. If individuals are not performing at the optimum level, those performance issues can be addressed before they become a bigger problem."

By using Workgroups to keep up with daily performance, our billing is much more accurate, and that is important for our overall profitability.
Marty DiFrisco, Director

DiFrisco points out that often, users will simply forget to enter activities, and his ability to monitor performance makes it easier to accurately correct those inadvertent omissions. He adds, "If it is not in the system, we can't bill for it. By using Workgroups to keep up with daily performance, our billing is much more accurate, and that is important for our overall profitability."

The solution has also made it easier for customers to log in to check project status, eliminating the need for them to call. DiFrisco points out, "Today, we have a staff of seven plus some free-lancers, and we are producing some 1,000 SKUs annually. That's half the volume we were doing before we spun out, but we are able to manage the work with one-third of the staff. Workgroups is a major contributor to our ability to work that lean."

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