Microdynamics, the company
Located in Naperville, Illinois, Microdynamics is a private, family-owned business established 30 years ago by President and CEO, Thomas Harter Sr. Today the company sustains annual revenue growth of 25 percent and more than 1000 customers nationwide, among them many Fortune 1000 companies. According to Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Thomas Harter, Jr., this remarkable growth can be attributed to the fact that Microdynamics focuses exclusively on its core business—producing customised and convergent invoices and statements. "We have successfully grown our business by specialising in invoices and statements and consistently building our expertise in this market."
The company processes daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly mailings, providing customers with services ranging from assistance with layout and mailing configu-rations, one-to-one marketing and postal preparation to in-house personalisation, insertion, mailing and inplant postal verifi-cation services. The company's niche is mid-to-large sized corporations, credit unions and financial institutions with print volumes of between 100,000 and 1,000,000 pages or envelopes per print run.
Microdynamics also provides electronic statement presentation (ESP) and electronic bill presentment & payment (EBPP) services to help customers manage today's converging applications and environments using paper-based delivery and a mix of electronic media. The company's e-statement offering integrates graphics, highlight colour, data mining and one-to-one marketing into customers' electronic presentment options. For more, go to the Internet at www.microdg.com and click e-statement. Harter notes, "Our services are very customised. Instead of just printing, mailing, and inserting invoices in envelopes, we use sophisticated quality controls and finishing system. We view our invoices and statements from a marketing perspective, focusing on the overall look and quality of every invoice and adding value through cross-selling messages and one-to-one personalisation to produce highly targeted documents."
The challenge
Frustrated with the service levels, costs, and click charges associated with the Xerox cut sheet printers they were using, Microdynamics determined that it wanted a faster, higher volume solution that could print on 8.5" x 11" preprinted roll forms. The company was using 10 cutsheet systems that were extremely expensive to operate for larger print volumes. And, as the company accepted larger and larger print jobs, Harter recalls, "We knew we had to either install one high speed, high volume system, or several cut sheet printers. From a footprint standpoint it made more sense to invest in one Océ Pagestream® 372."
The Océ solution
The company installed its first Pagestream 372 with an Océ PRISMA® Xplus front-end processor to perform Xerox transformations for Metacode applications. Six months later Microdynamics installed a second Pagestream 372 and is now considering purchasing two more.
From the initial application and installation to today's daily operations, the Océ systems have worked well. Harter recalls, "When we installed our first system, our Océ representa-tive was on-site 12 hours a day for the first few days making sure everything went well."
The Microdynamics print operation today
Today, the Microdynamics print facility, which runs 24 hours per day, 7 days a week, houses a variety of digital and offset presses and devices including two Pagestream printers, a PRISMA Xplus server, cut sheet laser printers, and Pitney Bowes series 8 and Bell & Howell intelligent inserters. The facility processes a monthly print volume of over 30 million pages per month. Everything including the forms and envelopes are produced under 'one roof'.
Microdynamics receives customer data through secure FTP/VPN transmissions and processes it, frequently formatting data to add marketing messages directly to statements or invoices. Any print run in excess of 100,000 images is sent to the Océ devices, where the forms are printed and inserted. The mail is inspected and accepted by a U.S. Postal employee on-site, and then loaded onto postal trucks for expedited delivery.
Pleased with the Océ products and services, Microdynamics is again turning to Océ. Currently the company is evaluating document composition solutions. It also is putting the Océ Pagestream through its paces, testing a one million-page application that merges a native AFP print file with a TIFF image file. The Pagestream system passed with flying colours, underscoring Océ's commitment to support any data stream-Metacode, AFP, line data, PostScript, PCL and XML-without having to re-engineer print jobs.
Microdynamics Representative Tom Harter Jr. Comments...
Harter comments, "We definitely can print significantly more now and are benefiting from savings in time and costs, along with a more compact footprint. Most important, when a high volume job comes in, we can handle it easily in hours instead of days. The print quality too is excellent—we've successfully migrated several customers from 600 dpi cut sheet devices to the Océ device."
The Future
As for the future, digital printing will play an ongoing role in the company's long-term print strategy. Microdynamics is considering two more Pagestream printers, as well as spot and full colour digital printers. Meanwhile, the company plans to continue finding ways to add value to customer invoices and finan-cial statements, partnering with Océ Printing Systems for the solutions and support they need. |
Solution at Microdynamics Group
