CPC picks up UK Athletics contract with new e-commerce platform

Witshire-based digital printer the Complete Product Company (CPC) has won the contract to supply an end-to-end online ordering, printing and fulfilment solution to UK Athletics (UKA).

CPC, which employs its own team of in-house web developers, won the contract on the back of the launch of its own e-commerce platform, eDocs, which was initially created as a stock tracking and ordering platform for CPC customers.

Neil James, quality and environment manager at CPC, said: "We added the e-commerce side to the existing platform because they wanted us to handle all the ordering and payment processing - they liked it and we won the business on the back of that."

CPC has integrated the eDocs platform with the uCoach website, which is UKA's online resource for athletics coaches and anyone pursuing an athletics coaching qualification, to create the uCoach Shop.

Orders taken through the shop are sent to CPC's print and fulfilment hub where they are either picked from stock or printed on demand, packaged and posted within 24 hours.

UKA coaching professional development manager Tom Crick said: "CPC's eDocs solution is perfect for our needs. The online shop is seamlessly integrated with our website making it easy for people to access our growing range of resources and coaching materials.

"CPC will print on demand, fulfil each order and take care of any returns should they be required. This is a fantastic step forward enabling us to bring top class coaching materials to the athletics community. The site has also enabled us to bring classic works, not previously available, such as Ralph Mann's The Mechanics of Sprinting and Hurdling to a much wider audience. This is a really cost-effective solution that takes away most of the pain of stockholding and distribution."

According to James, CPC is now looking to expand the platform so that it can be used as a web portal for businesses to update their entries in publications like the London Stock Exchange's member directory.

"Twice a year we call everyone who has an entry in the directory to confirm their details are correct, which usually takes about two to three months each time, and once we've got that the LSE signs it off and we print and distribute it," he said.

"What we're now looking at doing - via the eDocs platform - is opening a web portal twice a year and getting the customers to go online, view their entry and make the amendments themselves. We can then pull those changes down, print and dispatch the directory.

"Because we've got the [software development] resources in-house we can create a number of different platforms for different companies."