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With over 75 events a year, 60 sales representatives, and an expanding network of 140+ national partners, QlikTech's marketing group's time and budget were being consumed by the task of managing the printed sales collateral. Printing and warehousing in bulk just didn't make sense anymore. They needed a print solution which could adapt to their quickly changing needs.
QlikTech's marketing group manages the company's sales collateral; creating, printing and distributing everything from data sheets and white papers, to direct marketing campaigns and business cards. It's a small portion of the group's overall responsibilities, but one that began to consume more and more of the group's time and budget as QlikTech grew quickly into a leading business intelligence software company.
QlikTech looked for a print solution that would maximize its budget and minimize time spent on the print process, while continuing to deliver high-quality print materials, on-demand, to any sales representative or partner in North America. They also wanted the flexibility to create high-quality print materials for specific events.
To ensure the quality of its sales materials and control print costs, QlikTech printed in bulk, packing and shipping small quantities for trade shows, seminars and daily sales activities. As the company grew, centralized distribution wasn't economical in terms of manpower or shipping costs and with a distributed sales force, the marketing team couldn't ensure the field was always using the most current literature.
Amanda Gammons, QlikTech's event marketing manager for North America, is also responsible for literature fulfillment. "Each time we created new collateral, we sent a supply to the field, but never knew which pieces were used," states Gammons. It also was difficult to ensure that all partners and sales representatives had thrown out older versions and were using the most up-to-date materials.
For fast turnaround on literature for sales events and trade shows, Gammons tried Kinko's, but the process was still time-consuming and the quality wasn't consistent. "I still managed all the logistics of ordering and shipping and often had to carry literature to the show. It definitely wasn't fun lugging volumes of print materials to each event," states Gammons. Even business cards were time-consuming. "I had to manually customize each business card, send the .pdf to the printer, review the proof, and ship the cards."
"We also have an extensive partner network. If they needed literature quickly, they would often print materials on their own," continues Gammons. "We couldn't control the content, the quality of the piece, the integrity of our logo, our corporate colors, or even the formatting."
"We might have saved a little on the unit cost by buying our literature in bulk but we definitely paid more for shipping and we did twice the work, so ultimately printing in bulk was more expensive," concludes Gammons. "We were looking for a vendor that would enable the marketing team and the field to order literature without coming to me."
QlikTech began using HubCast's Cloud Print Service about 18 months ago and was so pleased they recently upgraded to HubCast's new product offering, HubCast Enterprise. "One of the reasons we moved forward with HubCast was because the cost of the actual printing was cheaper and we found we were saving more than 30% on shipping costs," declares Gammons. When HubCast introduced its Enterprise solution, QlikTech saw it as an affordable and manageable way to provide its remote sales force and partner network with on-demand access to the company's high-quality print materials. "HubCast Enterprise gives us a personal portal," explains Gammons. "No other vendor offered us that functionality."
QlikTech's personal portal looks just like QlikTech's website, and is easily accessible by any employee with a QlikTech email address. The marketing team can designate different levels of access to its library of print materials, based on a user's function; they can quickly approve literature orders online, and access real-time reports detailing print spending.
When the marketing team creates or updates literature, they just upload the .pdf to QlikTech's print portal and sales representatives can order flyers, data sheets, and white papers--whatever materials they need. "I no longer receive requests to order or ship literature, which really frees up my time," reports Gammons. The sales force also can order business cards directly through the portal. "With HubCast Cloud Print Solutions, the time required to print and ship business cards went from one month to a few days. Sales representatives simply go online to customize their cards and HubCast delivers the cards directly to the field office within days."
Nine months ago, QlikTech added a partner portal to its HubCast Enterprise account, providing partners with immediate access to accurate, up-to-date literature. Partners even have the option to co-brand literature and QlikTech is in the process of implementing a credit card payment system. "Our partners have been asking for this type of service," states Gammons. "From our perspective, it is a good way to monitor the literature our partners are using so we know they have the most current information. Plus, HubCast Enterprise is so fast and easy we are confident partners aren't creating their own materials. We know all literature reflects our corporate standards. We know our messages, logo and corporate colors are consistent. We even standardize on the paper we use."
Gammons is excited about HubCast's new range of product and service offerings, including large format printing and the enhanced personal library for online .pdfs. "HubCast enables me to log-in, upload my document, and print within one hour."
"I am extremely pleased with HubCast's Cloud Print Solutions. HubCast is inexpensive. They provide great customer service with a very professional staff, and HubCast is global, so we can roll out our programs internationally," concludes Gammons.