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State-of-the-art page composition and variable data printing

software have become the new norm. When combined with

advanced digital laser printers, intelligent insertion equipment,

and other advancements, we’re now in a better position than

ever to offer solutions to clients of all industries, no matter

their communication needs.

But even referring to ourselves as a “print services provider”

doesn’t tell the whole story, as it puts something of an artificial

limitation on what we do. Some of our clients are just looking

for someone to handle essential mail—for them, we do bills

and invoices and statements and other things of that nature.

But for most of our clients, our job is to bring them out of the

world of paper and into the modern era so they can better

communicate with their customers.

IT Manager at DTS Communicate

BY IAN BIGG

For over 25 years, DTS Communicate

has proudly served clients all across

Australia with our innovative blend

of print services. We have the ability

to not only receive and analyze data,

but transform it across a wide range

of different platforms. Our business

began in the days of the mainframe

computer and line printers, but it has

long since evolved into something far

more important. .

The Secret to Staying Relevant in an Evolving Industry? Focus on the Customer

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Over the last two decades that I’ve spent

with the company, the industry—and the

world—has changed exponentially. Even

before the smartphone thrust us into

the “digital first” age, there was already

a major shift away from paper and

towards fully electronic communication

environments. DTS Communicate has

shifted in the same direction over this

time, all in the name of providing greater

value to our customers.

Once we knew what our customers

wanted, we had all the information we

needed to figure out how to give it to

them. Those customers were clear: they

wanted digital. Therefore, it became our

job to support that.

THE ARC OF PROGRESS IS SLOW BUT STEADY

It’s difficult to imagine a time when the

industry wasn’t digital like it is today.

But from our point of view, I can tell you

exactly when evolution began to pick up

steam: 2011.

DTS Communicate has always used

Xerox printers. When I first started with

the company, we were using metacode

to produce output. Progress was a

move to a product called PReS, which

was locally available. We moved on

from that to a more visually-based

product called OPUS, which we relied on

for a number of years.

But in 2011, OPUS was starting to

show its age and quickly became

unsupportable in many ways. We

switched back to PReS, but the issue is

that it was primarily a programming

language. We were running into

problems trying to produce large

output—we had jobs that would run for

12 or 14 hours, and that was time we

could not afford.

At the same time, we were also finding

that more and more of our customers

were presenting us with what they

classed as “Print-Ready PDFs,” or PDF

documents that were coming out of

If your industry is evolving and you don’t know which way to go, listen to your customers. They will lead the way.

various systems that they then expected

us to be able to extract information

from. This, too, made things difficult on

the best of days.

Being the IT manager, it was my job to

find a solution that would not only allow

us to better serve our customers in the

short term, but that would also power

our business for the next 20 years and

beyond.

After careful research, we chose

Quadient®, which at the time was called

GMC. Little did I know, that one decision

all those years ago would pave the way

for an incredible era of evolution for

DTS Communicate and for our clients.

The factor that initially attracted me

to Quadient was that it was the one

family of products that did it all. We

only had to learn one language and

we could do everything we needed.

Most other alternatives had differing

bits and pieces. I loved the idea of

having a product where I could pick

the little magic boxes and put them

into a sequence and get it to do

what I needed, all in one easy-to-use

environment.

Once the decision had been made, one

of the first things we looked at were

some of those jobs that I referenced

earlier that were taking many hours to

run. One in particular used to take up to

12 hours to produce the output. When

we rebuilt that job in Quadient and ran

it, it suddenly took less than half an hour

to produce the same output.

At that point, we knew we were onto

something.

As I said, one of the major challenges

we were facing during this time had

to do with many of our customers

moving to various accounting packages

that would produce PDFs as output

rather than raw data. Luckily, Quadient

checked this box as well.

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BUILDING A PATH TO EVOLUTION, ONE BRICK AT A TIME

In a lot of ways, Quadient contributed

to our own shift over the years towards

embracing electronic delivery using

Messenger. That platform had to be

able to distribute on our customer’s

behalf, and we wanted to be able to use

Quadient’s automation engine to do as

much of that as possible.

To give you an example, we had an

application for one customer that had

all of their offices around Australia

connected together using a web-to-

print ordering system. They would

upload their data for all jobs once a

month, and over that period they would

generate between 50,000 and 60,000

emails.

Unless something went wrong, that

was all driven by the customer, not

by us. Most of the time, all of that

information was untouched (although

monitored). Via automation, they

could upload the data, check samples

and proofs, sign off on it, and get the

system to run and send. This freed

up valuable time for actual human

employees to focus on bigger and

more important things.

This represented an incredible shift in

the types of things we were able to

deliver to our own customers. Over the

last few years, we’ve seen a significant

reduction in the amount of mail packs

that we produce each week. For one

customer, we were producing roughly

80,000 physical mail packs per month.

Even though their business expanded,

we helped them get that number down

to about 8,000. This was symbolic of

what DTS Communicate itself was

going through, which involved moving

away from physical mailers and

embracing more of the digital side of

the industry.

If nothing else, this makes us a

far leaner organization than ever.

However, we still need to be able to

If you’re an #ITmanager, don’t look for the short-term fix. Find a solution to power your business for the next 20 years and beyond.

prove value to our customers. Thanks

to Quadient® Inspire, we’re now able

to accomplish important goals like

providing a consistent format to clients.

Not only can we dramatically increase

deliverability, but we’re also in a better

position to know when things don’t

deliver and why.

We’re also using Quadient’s own

content manager for version control,

which has been enormously helpful. It

allows us to not only store everything,

but also keep a robust library of

everything we’ve ever done, including

all assets and resources. Now, when

someone comes along and says, “Do

you remember that job we did five

years ago?” I can say, “Yes, we’ve still

got it. Here’s what it looked like. Here

are all the files we used to make it.

What is it that you wanted?”

Having that version control and a place

to store everything that the system

understands is another area that has

been critical to supporting us on our

own journey.

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WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?Overall, DTS Communicate has been

able to rapidly increase our production

times, which is vital in a day and age

where everyone demands immediate

gratification. Over the years, we’ve

seen customers go from expectations

of 48 to 72 hours of turnaround time

for a job, to the point where they

expect to get something back in a

couple of minutes.

Today, we run applications out of our

online system that generate images

for people to use on Facebook, for

example. They log in, upload some

images, put in some text, and press

the order button. Just a minute or

Today’s customers demand instant gratification, can your CCM solution deliver?

two later, they get an email with their

image. That process alone used to take

days and would involve countless hours

in manual assembly, but now we can

service our customers at the speed

they’ve come to expect.

Looking forward, there are a few things

that excite us, particularly in terms

of dynamic communications. There

is a market for applications that can

give a more data-driven, personalized

experience. It’s something that we’re

talking with a number of our clients

about now. It’ll once again help us

deliver more and more value to our

customers, which is ultimately the most

important goal of all.

If your mission is to generate as much

value as possible to the people you

serve, the evolution of an entire industry

isn’t something you need to dread any

longer. You can embrace it, because

you’re no longer passively reacting to

it. You’re actively participating in the

change.

You just need to find the right solution

that helps you do that. For us, that

solution is Quadient, and we couldn’t be

happier with the results.