GameWear Improves Communication and Collaboration with Microsoft® Office 2010

Passion and a competitive spirit are the driving forces behind New Jersey-based GameWear success. Launched in 2003, the company strives to evoke these same qualities in the sports apparel and accessories it creates and distributes across North America and Asia.

Boosting efficiency and productivity is always top-of-mind for GameWear executives, who focus on leveraging accurate, up-to-date data about company and sales team performance to find ways to improve overall operations.

Microsoft® Office 2010 provided the intuitive, innovative design and enhanced capabilities that the company had been seeking. By deploying this system through the technical implementation and support team of its IT partner—and Microsoft Gold Certified Partner—eMazzanti Technologies, GameWear was able to improve company performance and deliver better products to the market, faster.

 

Situation

For GameWear managers, analysing multiple sets of data―in massive amounts―to generate reports on performance of sales personnel, product inventory, and trends was difficult and time-consuming. And employees found that managing and updating the company catalogue, which was built in Microsoft Excel® and contained thousands of products and images, required the tedious process of emailing revisions back-and-forth to each other.

Plus, because GameWear staff received hundreds if not thousands of emails per day, they often spent more time managing, sorting, and organizing their inboxes than they would have liked.

GameWear needed to improve the way it sorted and analyzed data to better understand—and continually improve business performance, as well as improve collaboration and email organization so employees could accomplish more in less time.

 

Solution

That’s when GameWear turned to eMazzanti Technologies for help. GameWear rolled out Office 2010, resulting in faster, easier data analysis, enhanced collaboration, and improved email organization.

Frank Cerullo, co-founder of GameWear, remarks that this technology has been instrumental to the company’s rising success: “Thanks to Microsoft for engineering Office 2010, and our partner, eMazzanti Technologies, for bringing this product to life for us, we’ve found new opportunities to strengthen our competitive edge.”

Benefits

Turning Complex Data into Actionable Information

Sparklines, a new feature available in Microsoft Excel® 2010, enables users to visually display data by creating tiny charts or graphs within a single cell next to related values. For Cerullo, this feature has simplified data analysis tremendously.

“We’re constantly analysing data—from employee to product performance and even the viability of logos in specific regions,” he says. “Sparklines has made it infinitely easier to spot trends.”

Users can also utilize Slicers to visually “cut” and filter specific sets of data within an Excel PivotTable® and see what precisely what they need, allowing them to identify pertinent information faster. “We use PivotTables constantly to sort and track data—and we used to manually extract this data before analysing it,” Cerullo points out. “Slickers eliminate that manual step—so we can see what we need in seconds.”

Overall, Cerullo indicates that Excel 2010 has dramatically improved the way GameWear tracks, manages, and analyses data, resulting in better information that empowers smarter business decisions.

“Excel 2010 provides the fantastic reporting capabilities. And it’s created opportunities that didn’t exist before,” Cerullo says. “It’s a home run for us,” he adds with a smile.

 

Creating a Stronger Team for Improved Results

New co-authoring* tools available in the Excel Web App allow GameWear employees to work on the company catalogue at the same time, so they no longer need to integrate changes one at a time, close the document, and pass it back and forth for revisions.

“Excel is the foundation of our catalogue, which can contain 20,000 products and images that are updated regularly. Being able to collaborate on this document allows us to double our updating speed.”

Gaining a Competitive Edge with Improved Communication

The improved Conversation View in Microsoft Outlook® 2010 enables users to easily manage large amounts of email by condensing multiple messages in a discussion and displaying them as a single-line item—even if some of the messages are stored in separate folders.

“I used to spend an a lot of time sorting and organizing my inbox to retrieve related correspondence,” says Cerullo. “Conversation View does this for me automatically so I can spend more time helping my clients.”

Quick Steps allows users to perform multi-command tasks, such as email forwarding, with a single click—saving time and streamlining workflow. “I field so many messages that I have several groups to which I forward messages,” Cerullo points out. “With Quick Steps, I can quickly send important emails to the right person, right away.”

Overall, Cerullo is impressed by the ease-of-use, intuitive interface, and overall speed and performance of Office 2010. “The smooth integration provided by eMazzanti Technologies and new interface of Office 2010 combine to create a powerful and tremendous advantage,” he says. “We can accomplish everything in two clicks or less!”

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