Omega is a leading full-service communications company specializing in printing, direct mail, displays, websites, PR, design and marketing – including branding, social media, lead generation and more.
In late 2007, the growing New Jersey-based company was looking to update its proprietary business management software. In short, it needed new technology that was centralized, more efficient and facilitated a much smoother workflow from project input to final delivery. Job estimating was a particular issue that had numerous challenges.
Omega decided to call on Avanti. By mid-2008 the company had implemented all of Avanti’s Print MIS modules. These included Customer Contact Management (CRM), Estimating & Order Entry, Direct Mail Management, Triggers and Alerts, and other strategies.
The result? Since that time, Omega has cut costs and added new clients resulting in an increased profitability of about $1,000,000.
How Avanti helped Omega boost profits by $1,000,000
“For us, the best way to proceed was to completely rethink our business,” said Print Art Inc. COO Frank Nardi. “We took a fresh look at every cost centre and every profit centre in our shop. We researched alternatives and re-thought every aspect of our business intelligence. All departments and all price models were thoroughly reviewed. Every procedure was evaluated down to the smallest detail.”
In a nutshell, by the end of 2008, Nardi said that Avanti had basically changed the way his company did business – and those changes proved to be both significant and substantial.
“The ‘inch-long’ improvements we made in those days allowed us to make ‘mile-long’ improvements down the road,” Nardi said. “Today, with Avanti’s flexible systems, we are able to constantly adjust our workflow as the need arises. Bottom line: Since we partnered with Avanti, we have cut costs and added clients that, when combined, have resulted in an increased profitability of about $1,000,000.”
Job estimating was a particular problem area. Avanti’s Job Manager technology, for example, gave Omega real-time information on job costs and tracking, profitability, invoicing, scheduling, shipping and change-order information. Order Entry and Job Costing capabilities calculated costs and prices as each job was entered. Staffers could even create templates for jobs with pre-defined combinations of items.
Above all, Avanti technology generated dynamic “job tickets” from just one module that gave users all the job-related information they would ever need. Shop Floor Data Collection allowed easy input and verification of real-time data by shop staff on one screen from one location. This technology proved to be invaluable and was used to track labour, productivity, equipment utilization, spoiled items, production rates, and so on.
A smoother ride on the road to FSC Certification
Avanti also helped Omega achieve sought-after FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) Certification. FSC is an independent, non-governmental, not-for-profit organization established to promote the responsible management of the world’s forests.
“If you don’t totally automate the FSC process, it can be extremely costly and cumbersome,” said Nardi. “If one single part of the chain-of-custody (such as invoicing, purchase orders, packing slips, box labels) is broken and the job is delivered, then it cannot be counted as an FSC-Certified project. The auditors are very, very strict about this. Avanti’s MIS modules gave our team members the ability to easily create customer reports that tracked every job through the FSC’s strict guidelines.”
The technology, using easily retrievable job tickets documenting every stage of production, guaranteed that the company was meticulously following the correct procedures from start to finish, especially when it came to proper labeling.
“Avanti’s input-only-once approach streamlines the FSC process. Before each audit, we even give the FSC auditors reports in PDF format that tracked every job through the chain of custody for that year,” recalled Nardi. “These reports made it easy for the auditors to evaluate us in only a few hours. It’s a smooth process and a major reason why FSC works at our facility. It allows us to automate, standardize and scale without adding more resources. It saves us time and allows us to be more efficient for our customers.”
