The experience of the Gemeente Dongen

As a result of the Corona crisis, we at Gemeente Dongen had to start working from home quite suddenly and on a large scale. When the first practical problems had been solved and it looked like the crisis would continue for some time, and our employees indicated that they would like to work from home on a structural basis. That meant it was time to provide home office supplies.

We started looking on the internet and after some market research, we ended up at Coolblue rather quickly. Mostly because of the many advertisements about the Home Office Store and many colleagues that are already familiar with Coolblue.

We concluded that setting up a home office via the Home Office Store from Coolblue was the most practical and fastest solution. The Coolblue Home Office Store gives employees the opportunity to order everything for their home office themselves. The Gemeente Dongen gets a protected environment in their corporate identity. Once an employee has logged in, they see a limited assortment and they can order products within the set budget. Coolblue will deliver the order to your employee for free the next day and invoices the incurred costs to Gemeente Dongen on a monthly basis.

Market research has shown that there aren't any comparable companies that are able to deliver similar services, a complete assortment, quality, speed, and service. The uniqueness of Coolblue as a supplier is that the Coolblue Home Office Store can be built in a few weeks, so employees can purchase home office supplies in no time. In addition, Gemeente Dongen was able to put the assortment together themselves, which is always in stock by the way. This is an important condition in these times, given the large shortages and long delivery times of ICT and home office supplies.

We chose Coolblue because of the large assortment, fast delivery, the accessible Customer Service, and the high service level. We wanted it to be taken care of as quickly and easily as possible, so we could facilitate our employees with the necessary supplies at short notice.

After deciding to go in business with Coolblue, we first has a video call with Dennis, who showed us all the possibilities.

For the assortment, we looked into things that complement what we already provide from the Gemeente Dongen. We also sent out a survey to our employees to find out what is needed. This lead to the following categories in our assortment:

• Monitors
• Office furniture including office balls and foot stools
• Keyboard and mice