Pitney Bowes Launches Critical Communications Solutions for Complex, High-Value Communications Needs
Thursday, 03 January 2008
Pitney Bowes Management Services, Inc. (PBMS), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pitney Bowes Inc., has formally launched Critical Communications Solutions (CCS), an integrated print and distribution solution for business critical communications that require a high degree of coordination, customization, accuracy, and control.
Pitney Bowes CCS has two components: high-value customer communications (including client retention, compliance and demand response) and collateral management, which includes electronic fulfillment, digital migration, warehousing cost management, brand compliance, and strategic sourcing. This solution supports high value customer or constituent communications that are personalized, such as a credit card issuer signing on new retailers, or a pharmaceutical company communicating to healthcare professionals on the potential risks associated with a drug.
Pitney Bowes CCS also adds value to the collateral management process through technology that manages multiple versions of a mailpiece or document, including warehousing and storage of materials, fulfillment and distribution, and the use of Digital Variable Print-on-Demand. In addition, it helps ensure a consistent brand for companies that expand operations across product categories and languages.
Stacy DeWalt, vice president, Vertical Market Development and Marketing for PBMS, explained that Pitney Bowes CCS is particularly valuable in today’s fast-paced and highly competitive customer messaging environment, where complex, critical communications must have a strong impact to cut through the clutter.
"By their very nature, critical communications must make an immediate impression on the recipient or they will fail in their primary mission to solicit a response. They also must be produced as efficiently as possible to keep costs down while achieving maximum ROI for the organization," says DeWalt. "Integrating and streamlining the work processes involved in the entire create-to-distribute communications process enables managers to view the various components to achieve the highest impact at the lowest cost," she added.
Early customer trials of Pitney Bowes CCS have had a proven, positive impact on effectiveness and cost-savings. For example:
A national credit card issuer was experiencing low merchant retention as a result of an ineffective new merchant activation kit. By using Pitney Bowes CCS, the print and distribution functions were integrated, and a new, fully customized format for the kit was developed. As a result of the switch in formats, the new merchant activation kit was more effective and less expensive. It has compressed the time between the receipt of the kit and retailer activation by two-thirds, and saved more than $1 per kit in production, inventory and distribution costs.
A group of drug manufacturers faced a mandate from the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to implement new procedures to assure that a certain population of women did not take a particular family of drugs, which were otherwise safe and effective, because of a link to birth defects. Pitney Bowes CCS enabled the drug companies to successfully assure the FDA that health care professionals were aware of the risks and that the affected population did not use the drug. In addition, the streamlined print and delivery processes have saved the companies an estimated $2.5 million in production and mailing costs.
In addition, the Massachusetts-based analyst firm IDC recently issued an opinion on PBMS and its new bundled solutions, which said, "PBMS has created a wide breadth of mail and document management offerings and packaged them nicely, building on its expertise in the postal market and expanding that expertise to include document management and processing solutions." * The complete IDC Opinion for PBMS can be obtained by logging on to the Pitney Bowes website at www.pb.com/pbmsreport.