This Packaging Company Built a $1B Business with Manual Processes, and Here’s Why It’s Going Digital

Stephen Gould has built a $1B business by bringing products and packaging to life for leading companies across retail, food and beverage, CPG, medical, and more over the past 80 years.

The packaging and product design supplier doesn’t sell a concrete set of products. Instead, it manufactures tens of thousands of new packaging concepts for its customers. Rather than forecasting, tracking, and shipping inventory, bringing its projects to life means coordination across a massive network of suppliers, designers, and engineers. It also means communicating with customers every step of the way.

With such a large network of vendors and customers, Stephen Gould’s growth is largely dependent on its ability to scale and modernize the processes that drive its packaging solutions from design to fulfillment. But, like many legacy companies, Stephen Gould was reliant on decades-old manual systems and internal processes–primarily driven by paper.

Looking to transform its internal processes to meet the needs of a global digital workforce and ever-growing customer base, Stephen Gould started to work with Slingshot.

Slingshot is a digital workplace that brings together projects, content, chats, and data all in one application. The platform introduces a single place for teams to collaborate, communicate and connect digitally. 

With Slingshot, Stephen Gould’s teams no longer need to switch from one application to another to complete a task or interrupt their workflow by trying to dig up conversations from email or messages. Every team member has access to the projects, content, CRM, and company data they need in one place–which also alleviates individuals from being the ‘gatekeeper’ of specific information. Teams and suppliers can chat and manage projects together–no matter where they are in the world. And everyone now has everything they need to do their job–exactly when they need it.

“We work with our customers everyday to transform their product visions into tangible, real-world experiences, and with Slingshot, we’re now bringing that level of innovation to our own internal project management processes,” said Aaron Salko, Regional Sales Manager, Stephen Gould. 

Stephen Gould’s newly digitized approach to project management has already increased productivity and efficiencies across the business. Teams that would spend hours a day on specific tasks, now only spend minutes. Stephen Gould has also increased visibility into workflows and other factors that affect project success, increasing accountability for individuals and teams.

“We’ve been able to improve the speed at which teams can find data and utilize it, which in a service-driven industry like ours, is absolutely critical for success. We’ve completely transformed how our teams work and are driving business growth because of it.” added Salko.

Slingshot introduces data storage and visualization into teams’ day-to-day workflow so they can easily access, analyze and act on the otherwise disparate data they need to drive projects forward. The platform’s Data Catalog powers every user–even without previous data analysis experience–to derive value from data and use it to make more informed decisions.

“We created Slingshot to offer teams a place where they can not only get work done in the digital realm, but better collaborate, make informed decisions, improve productivity, and ultimately, drive business results,” said Dean Guida, Founder of Slingshot. “By digitizing its internal processes and bringing everything–be it projects, chat, analytics, or content– together, Stephen Gould has truly unleashed the power of its teams.”