Case Study – Coughlan Companies

When Coughlan Companies approached us in 2002 to build five Web sites driven from the same platform; they had a vision to achieve the highest levels of customer-driven Web site functionality.

The company produces a series of high-quality catalogs that school librarians and teachers have used to configure and order books individually and in series. With a very small percentage of orders coming in via the Web, Coughlan recognized that a big opportunity to improve customer service and reduce order processing costs lay in e-commerce.

But ordering books for school libraries is not standard e-commerce fare – Coughlan orders require a host of special features such library barcode label processing, accelerated reader software, and aggressive promotions with channel partners.

"Catalytic Catalog took the time to understand our business needs and goals.  We were involved throughout the development process – eliminating surprises at the end of the development process. This partnership ensured our project's success. In the past, we had worked with technology vendors who listened to our business requirements, but developed with out any on-going input. This approach left us with a significant amount of revisions and unexpected cost at the end of the development process."

Although the Microsoft Commerce Server platform initially appeared to offer the function and extensibility that Coughlan needed, it quickly became apparent that a custom e-commerce platform was required instead.

Because Catalytic Catalog had substantial custom Web product catalog development experience with children’s books, we were retained to build the sites.

Today, the Coughlan sites establish a new benchmark for meeting customer needs with their Web catalogs. Online sales have reliably achieved four times Coughlan’s projections and the ROI on the project occurred in one-fourth original estimates.