One step at a time: Inside Mark’s Commercial’s digital transformation

For years, getting a pair of CSA-approved safety boots through a workplace footwear program meant paperwork, and lots of it. A voucher, a signature, a trip to a store, a careful filing system, and an administrator somewhere, tracking everything by hand.

Mark’s Commercial is in the process of replacing that system, and the footwear program’s upgrades are just one part of a broader tech shift the company has underway. 

The first phase, the Footwear Digital Voucher, has been running as a pilot with select customers ahead of a wider rollout; it replaces the paper trail with something much closer to a tap-and-go transaction. The process is as easy as you’d imagine: employers work with Mark’s Commercial to set employee entitlements, those entitlements are loaded into the platform, and employees redeem them in-store using a digital voucher, rather than a paper one. 

The in-store experience is smooth too: on checkout, the voucher gets scanned, the system checks eligibility and applies the program’s rules, then updates the employee’s remaining balance, and handles the billing information. (That’s all in the time it used to take to find the right form.)

Adam Gaiser, Vice President, Mark’s Commercial, says the push to build the Digital Voucher came from an honest read on where workplace habits were heading.

“It was never about digitizing a paper voucher for the sake of technology,” Gaiser said. “It was about removing friction from the process. The easier it is for employees to access approved safety footwear, the more likely they are to have the protection they need when they need it.”

That same instinct, cutting down on friction, shows up in how Gaiser describes the problem for employers, many of whom were managing footwear entitlements through manual, paper-heavy processes with limited visibility into usage. “Digital Voucher gives employers a much clearer view of their program while simplifying many of the administrative tasks that come with managing it,” he said.

Gaiser also pointed to scale as a design requirement from the outset. The program had to be built to work, full stop, whether a customer has 50 employees or 5,000.

Before scaling the platform broadly, Mark’s Commercial ran a pilot with a group of existing customers. A process which, Gaiser explained, reshaped parts of the plan.

“There is always a risk when you’re building something new that you convince yourself you’ve created a great solution, only to discover that it doesn’t solve the problems customers need solved,” he said. According to Gaiser, the pilot confirmed the core problem was real. Customers wanted less administration and better visibility, and employees wanted an easier redemption experience, but it also underscored that introducing fresh technology alone wasn’t the point. A shiny new platform that ultimately confused customers wouldn’t solve anything (and would likely introduce new problems). “It’s about making the experience simple, intuitive, and practical for both employers and workers,” he explained.

For current customers, changes won’t come as a surprise. “We aren’t moving customers to the Footwear Digital Voucher without a conversation,” Gaiser said. “Our approach is to work collaboratively with each customer to build a transition plan that aligns with their needs.” For additional support, the company has also built out instructional videos, training materials, and resources to guide customers through the change. 

The transition across Mark’s Commercial’s customer base is slated to be completed over the next 18 months. 

And the footwear program isn’t the only piece of Mark’s Commercial’s operation getting an update. The company is also in the early stages of a broader website overhaul, part of a holistic vision of modernizing the eCommerce experience behind its B2B programs. Taken together, the footwear platform and the website work point to modernization as a comprehensive, sequential project, rather than a single-tool overhaul.  

“Our existing eCommerce platform has served us well, but it’s become increasingly difficult to scale, enhance, and support the modern purchasing experience that customers expect today,” Gaiser explained. He described the investment less as a technology upgrade, and more so an extension of the same principle driving the voucher rollout: “These investments aren’t really about technology. They’re about removing friction for our customers.”

This article was produced in partnership with SiteMedia Content Studio.