On the move: An online retailer uses a UPS integrated solution to ship four times faster

Putting customers in the driver's seat: Creating shipments no longer slows down GoMobileNow.com’s Kevin Jones, thanks to a UPS Ready solution.

Want to see your business featured in Compass? Tell us about it.

Kevin Jones has always been ahead of the curve. About 10 years ago, the Yuma, Ariz., resident noted that business people were spending more and more time on the road – their cars often doubling as offices. So in 1999, he launched GoMobileNow.com, a retail website selling RAM Mounting Systems and accessories such as laptop mounts and mobile desk units to help people get business done on the move.

Jones relied on UPS as his primary carrier, and his UPS account manager, Vincent Gentile, set up Jones with the UPS WorldShip^® shipping solution to get orders to people ranging from engineers needing to view construction plans to police officers needing to run vehicle and driver's license checks.

When orders came in from his company's website, Jones would print them and enter the information into QuickBooks, an accounting solution for small business from Intuit. Then he'd enter the same information into WorldShip. Processing each shipment took Jones about four minutes, and he processed some 60 orders a day.

QuickBooks becomes UPS Ready^®
When QuickBooks released an update with a built-in shipping application for another carrier, Jones just kept typing. "I've always been taken care of with UPS," says Jones. "And when something works, I don't like to change it."

So he took matters into his own hands. "I kept calling Intuit and asking them, 'When are you going to include in QuickBooks a shipping connection for UPS services?' " he recalls. "Six months later, they called me and told me it was UPS Ready." (UPS Ready certification assures customers that solutions provide in-system access to the entire portfolio of UPS services.)

Now, when Jones receives an order, he creates an invoice in QuickBooks by entering the customer's name, shipping address and order details. (WorldShip could do this automatically, but Jones prefers to ensure the requested products are compatible.) Next, he retrieves the customer's credit card information and charges the customer, triggering a notice to his shipping department to fulfill the order. With QuickBooks' UPS Ready capabilities, shipping, invoicing and accounting are completed simultaneously.

Four times faster
"Now we can get orders out faster," says Jones. "What used to take upward of four hours now takes about an hour."

Jones also tapped UPS technology for his website. Using UPS OnLine^® Tools, a suite of products that embed UPS shipping functionality into any retail website, customers of GoMobileNow.com can access a virtual UPS shipping department without leaving Jones's website. There, during shopping, they can choose their shipping service, submit their order and then track their shipment, limiting the number of "Where's my stuff?" calls that Jones's staff must deal with.

"GoMobileNow.com's customers expect a lot," says Gentile, the UPS account manager. "These solutions help provide a better customer experience and a more dependable service – and that differentiates the company from the competition."