Hit Promotional Products And The Magnet Group Now Fully Integrated In ASI's ESP

Live product inventory and pricing available from two Top 40 suppliers

TREVOSE, PA – July 11, 2016 –The Advertising Specialty Institute® (ASI) today announced top 40 suppliers The Magnet Group and Hit Promotional Products are now fully integrated with ESP®, giving distributors instant access to product inventory and the most updated pricing from the integrated suppliers.

In addition to Hit (asi/61125) and Magnet (asi/68507), ASI is actively working with more than 30 additional suppliers – representing tens of thousands of products and billions in industry sales – to fully integrate ESP with even more supplier systems and workflows.

As more and more suppliers become e-commerce-enabled in the new ESP platform, which includes just-added ESP CRM and Orders, distributors will be able to seamlessly place orders and receive status updates directly from suppliers – without leaving ESP. Several hundred distributors will be added each week to the new orders platform during its rollout, which begins July 18.

“Providing customers real-time information on the status of their orders and inventory information in a platform they are already using is a real plus,” said Eric Shonebarger, chief information officer of Hit. “Well-formed purchase orders will allow orders to be processed faster and more accurately than before, and to hit our factory floor within 15 minutes. As an added bonus, ASI’s team of developers are professional, collaborative and eager to assist in any way they can.”

“The promotion industry needs to continue adopting practices of other industries that have been sending and receiving electronic information for several decades,” said Jonas Temple, IT manager of Magnet. “The Magnet Group already dramatically decreased the time it takes to update ESP when we publish new catalogs and shortened the amount of time required to bring new products to market. And now, by taking orders through ESP, we are going to save time and money when it comes to answering our customer’s questions about products, inventory levels and order status.”

ASI will demonstrate the all-new ESP platform at ASI Show® Chicago, Tuesday, July 12, through Thursday, July 14. The annual show features a special keynote Q&A with national political pundits Mary Matalin and James Carville.

“Everyone at ASI is excited about kicking off a new era in our industry with direct connectivity from Counselor Top 40 suppliers like The Magnet Group® and Hit Promotional Products,” said Timothy M. Andrews, president and chief executive officer of ASI. “Instantly knowing in a single click what inventory is in stock, right from the supplier themselves, is vital for any distributor doing business today.”

With CRM and Orders, distributors can easily add existing contacts and view all past conversations by clicking on a company’s profile, where all orders, quotes and shared presentations pop into view, simplifying re-orders. Since it’s synced with ESP’s robust product database, the new ESP Orders auto-populates all product data, eliminating re-keying of information.

By managing all daily business operations in ESP, distributors will save an estimated 45 minutes per day, thanks to increased efficiencies.

The e-commerce-enabled ESP platform is integrating with ASI’s SmartBooks® and ProfitMaker® and Intuit QuickBooks™.

ASI’s ESP platform includes an open architecture that will allow easy integration into any other order management or financial packages, and several distributors and software vendors are engaged in development already.

For more information on ESP, contact Julie Murphy, ASI’s senior vice president of distributor services, at jmurphy@asicentral.com, or Christy Tramdaks, ASI’s director of integration solutions, at ctramdaks@asicentral.com.

About ASI
The Advertising Specialty Institute (ASI®) serves a network of 25,000 suppliers, distributors and decorators in the $22 billion promotional products industry. ASI’s flagship product, the technology platform ESP®, manages the industry’s entire supply and marketing chain. ASI also produces award-winning digital and print content, live events and educational programs that enable companies in 61 countries to be more efficient, productive and profitable. ASI’s Counselor® magazine provides the most authoritative business content in the industry, and the ASI Certification Program features 500+ live and online education courses for over 40,000 professionals. The company, family owned and operated since 1962, is proud to have been consistently ranked among the “Best Places to Work” in Philadelphia and Bucks County, PA. For more info:www.asicentral.com.