Tom O'Reilly, President & CEO Being the President and CEO of Aptaris, the story of Reilly stands out among the many “titanic struggles” we hear about startups. Aptaris—the Latin word that means adapt, accommodate and fit, sums it all. From long working hours to constant financial pressures and a series of failed attempts, Reilly says, “You name it, and I have experienced it.” Reilly’s relationship with the retail industry began when he kick started his career at 15 with a clothing store. After laborious years of his battle to establish a startup, Reilly and his team unveiled their new brand Aptaris in 2013. What started as a company that solely manages print production, Aptaris today has grown into a suite for simplifying and streamlining the entire marketing and promotions for the retailers.
Employing 30 years of industry experience, Aptaris’s suite of solutions focuses specifically on the promotional needs of present day retailers. Being a CEO himself, Reilly believes that, “CIOs and IT departments are intricately involved in the retail promotion and advertising process.” However, the disparate systems within the retail promotion and advertising processes restrict IT executives from managing and integrating the valuable data. Making such due diligence easier for CIOs, Aptaris has an established software installation process, which reduces the use of redundant systems. It allows the Chief Marketing or Merchandising Officers and CIOs to be more collaborative—empowering relevant communications to consumers that drive more sales. In Reilly’s words, “Aptaris’s software creates a platform for IT to share data across marketing, merchandising, and finance departments, allowing impactful promotions that can be adjusted quickly according to a shopper’s response.”
An All-In-One Platform
Given the enormous size of competition in retail industry, promotional decisions and execution are critical to boost an organization’s bottom-line revenue. Having learned the value of promotional tools, Aptaris offers a crystal ball of user-friendly promotion and merchandising solutions.
“Solving problems is an important component of Aptaris’s DNA,” says Reilly. Living up to this statement, Aptaris’s package of solutions begin with assisting the executive level all the way down to creating advertisements that will have an impact on the end-consumers.
Development is not done in a vacuum, but instead with a solid client understanding
The series of merchandising solutions offered by Aptaris makes it easy to view, compare, and evaluate offers delivered by the retailers. While the Calendar Solution gives a real-time view into each promotion within two to three clicks, Marketing Solution delivers seamless integration of marketing, merchandising, and creative teams. Calendar also identifies the areas in which the retailers need to improve.
Sustaining the magnitude collaboration and integration, Aptaris once reduced the 30 plus disparate systems that were used within a client’s daily framework to half its number, giving them a platform to collaborate across departments. The software tools provided by the company lets merchants, manufacturers, and marketing teams collaborate to achieve one common goal—offer the possible relevant promotions, increase loyalty, and maximize profits.
The company's Marketing Solution provides flexibility and speed for maximum efficiency so that retailers can act fast on new opportunities and respond as the marketplace evolves. Tying financial forecasts and historical performance data together, Aptaris’s Merchandising Solution gives retailers the ability to view and compare the available offers, enabling them to bring the right promotions to the customers.
Vendor Connect, another proprietary solution, offers greater visibility of events and deals in real-time with the ultimate goal of getting funding approved more quickly. This real-time vendor collaboration tool allows customers to directly connect with the vendor and have better control of the promotions, workflow, and the end results. Besides the company’s powerful platforms, Reilly is particularly excited about Aptaris’s recent strategic partnership with dunnhumby, a customer science company. With this partnership, Aptaris now offers the only, combined-solution promotional management tool that combines real-time, scientific decision-making with an end-to-end workflow management tool.Reflecting on this, Reilly adds, “From start to finish, clients can save time, money, aggravation and worry.”
Built By the Retailers for Retailers
Growing up in a family of retailers, Reilly has always been focused on the changing dynamics of retail, marketing, and advertising. In his pursuit of success, he was especially inspired by two concepts— ‘scaffolding and insulants’ which he learned from what he refers, a “good to great book for entrepreneurs”—The Breakthrough Company by Keith McFarland.
While Scaffolding is the network of outside resources, one can access for strategy and execution of areas beyond their expertise, insulants are the people, trusted advisors, and mentors who challenge organizations to keep improving and evolving. Upholding the importance of these strategies, Aptaris engages with a core team of professionals and an advisory board, which brings a wealth of expertise into the company.
“Aptaris’s software creates a platform for IT to share the data across marketing, merchandising, and finance departments”
This also reflects in the company's client engagements. “Development is not done in a vacuum, but instead with a solid client understanding,” says Reilly. Aptaris’s programmers work closely with their clients so they get an understanding of their business challenges to develop and upgrade software tailored to their needs. A leading retailer-owned cooperative—Associated Wholesale Grocers (AWG)—who serves more than 3,000 retail stores across 28 states in eight divisions deployed the Aptaris software to enable easy-to-implement promotions that lowered costs while offering better prices for the shoppers. As each of AWG’s division had different ways of doing business using different processes, Aptaris presented them with a common platform across all divisions. The solution streamlined AWG’s processes, reduced average time to collect vendor funds, and expedited billing processes from days to hours.
Innovation: The Driving Force
Innovating solutions that best suits the changing needs of its clientele, Aptaris’s management spends a lot of time on whiteboards and brainstorming sessions. The ‘culture of innovation’ created in the company allows the developers and engineers to not only meet the needs but also anticipate and look beyond the horizon. Considering the hyper-connected consumer demanding instantaneous information that is highly personalized, promotions must be relevant and timely as never before. To this end, the company’s engineers are constantly encouraged to learn from the setbacks and continuously improve.
“With rapid technology advancements, our culture of innovation adds to our continued relevance to our markets and clients,” expounds Reilly. In addition, with dunnhumby on its side Aptaris is looking forward to introduce revolutionary products, which have the immense potential to further propel retailers’ ability in offering exciting deals to their customers.
Advising the budding entrepreneurs to look beyond their capabilities to offer services that exceed clients’ expectations, Reilly concludes by passing on a principle that led him to where he is today—“Go with your gut.”
