During a recent interview, someone asked me if there was a time when I knew events and developments were changing the marketing fulfillment business forever.
Without hesitating, I said “Yes—1998.”
That was the year I was first exposed to the true power of the Internet. Of course I was aware that it existed; it was a place to browse and explore various topics or research businesses—nothing more than a novelty or online encyclopedia, really. Safe to say, up to that point, no one could say for certain where it was headed.
At that time, OnFulfillment was doing what we might consider today relatively simple literature printing and fulfillment. Most of our business was conducted over the phone or via fax. Orders were taken, submitted, and shipped based on conversations with real people. Everything was hands on—there was no other way.
But in 1998, at least as I remember it, things began to change. Suddenly it seemed the Internet was becoming a viable business platform. It wasn’t just a place to find information; it was evolving into a place where customers could interact with vendors using online tools. No need to call a rep to submit an order; simply open a web page, fill in a form, provide the required information such as the item, quantities, and destination, and hit “enter.” No phone call, no fax, no conversation. While hard to fathom today, this was truly revolutionary stuff.
No one knew at the time where this was going, but it was clear the world was changing. Suddenly everything was happening online. In the rush to capitalize on the new technology, countless companies that ended in “.com” appeared during the boom, then disappeared after the bubble burst.
For a company like OnFulfillment, it was obvious to me that it would fundamentally change how we be doing business moving forward. The possibilities were virtually endless: online ordering; collaboration; real-time reporting. Everything we now take for granted was available for the first time. It was incredible and intoxicating.
AI: The Next Revolution
With artificial intelligence (AI), I believe we are on the cusp of an equally impactful revolution. While there’s no telling who the winners and losers will be, I can say with confidence that OnFulfillment and our customers will benefit tremendously.
For instance, at the very least, potential customers can use AI to find OnFulfillment. Rather than use a search engine to find a vendor using specific key words, customer can submit a question asking for vendors that offer the various services they are seeking and get a response that offers a full analysis, including pros and cons, of the companies that meet that criteria. For prospects looking for the comprehensive marketing fulfillment, printing, event management, storage, and shipping capabilities offered by OnFulfillment, AI will lead them straight to our door. It’s a win-win for both sides.
But the true benefits offered by AI go far beyond simple query responses. The technology will actually improve the level and quality of services that companies can offer their installed base, resulting in higher satisfaction and more efficient processes.
Our programmers are already using AI to help write and test their code, allowing us to provide better or improved service in a fraction of the time as previously required. Customer service reps are using AI to make their communications more concise and targeted.
To help our team, OnFulfillment has integrated Microsoft 365 Copilot into our internal system. While we could have selected any one of the number of AI enterprise tools available—Google Gemini AI, OpenAI (ChatGPT), IBM Watsonx, Amazon SageMaker—we went with Copilot for two simple reasons: first, as a customer of the Microsoft stack it just made sense, and second, it keeps our data more secure than a publicly available platform.
Security and compliance will become critically important in the future, when we incorporate Copilot and AI into our customers’ portals. This capability is not available yet, but that is our vision: to give our customers the ability to use AI within our system to gain more control over their marketing fulfillment operations. This is where we believe the true power of artificial intelligence will reveal itself.
Employing AI for Marketing Fulfillment
One thing that AI does extremely well is gather data from multiple sources, analyze that date, and then produce reports that summarize those findings. Critically, it can do all this using “plain” or natural language. Once incorporated into the portal, customers will be able to gather information on virtually anything they can imagine with respect to their marketing fulfillment activity and have it provided to them in the form of a detailed report or summarized in an e-mail.
This is possible because it will give our clients real-time access to the supply chain. Currently our webstores are connected to our Warehouse Management System (WMS) via APIs. We have literally dozens of these APIs running behind the scenes, providing real-time inventory information about those store fronts.
This is where AI and Large Language Models (LLM) get exciting. In addition to our webstores, we use project management software to order and manage our branded promotional products and print management jobs. We also have separate accounting software that performs monthly billings.
Now imagine giving our customers the ability to simply type into their portal “Give me an overview of my orders for the year to date” or “Create a report showing my inventory usage for the year.” The LLMs, assisted by AI, would quickly and securely gather that information from the stack and provide it to you in any format you like. It would also prompt you to see if there was any other information you would like to see, such as “Would you like to know your total spend on apparel this year?”
That’s not all. Customers could request increasingly granular reports such as who has ordered what, when they ordered it, the unit cost for each item, where they were shipped, and the associated freight costs. Information can be sorted, collated, organized, or even interpreted in any way the customer can imagine, offering whatever level of detail they like. All with a simple request made in plain English.
Once incorporated into the portal, our customers will be able to run these sorts of reports and more. No longer will they be limited to the criteria listed within traditional pull-down menus to create canned reports. Their entire marketing fulfillment universe will be available to them, presented in any format they like.
AI Is Coming to OnFulfillment
While this capability is not quite available yet from OnFulfillment, it’s coming. Not in years but months. We expect this to be functional in 2026.
Not only with this be a big improvement for our customers, it will benefit us as well. Enabling our customers to seek and gather detailed information about their marketing fulfillment services allows us to focus on other things that benefit our customers, such as improving services or finding more efficient ways to deliver those services better, faster, and cheaper.
The revolution is coming, and OnFulfillment is prepared for it.
To learn more about how OnFulfillment can help with your marketing fulfillment, event management, printing, storage, and shipping needs, request a meeting with us below.
