Based out of New Orleans, Louisiana for the past 50 years, Pel Hughes Printing, LLC is a technology-driven, full-service printing and mailing company that serves the entire Gulf of Mexico region. Pel Hughes combines the services of four-color offset printing and high-speed color laser digital printing with the most comprehensive state-of-the-art mailing services available. They have grown and expanded their digital printing operations from providing statements for a few credit unions in 1991, to currently servicing over 70 credit unions, numerous medical firms, and more than 15 casinos. In 2003, Pel Hughes distributed over 45 million pieces of mail on behalf of their clients. Solimar interviewed Stuart Masson, Manager of Applications Development at Pel Hughes Printing, for an overview of how they benefit from using Solimar products.
Prior to installing the Solimar® Print/Director system, Pel Hughes' computer output and print operations were strictly "off-line" and very labor intensive. All print files were written to magnetic tapes, which were then hand carried to laser printers, loaded, and printed. The manual operations and time-consuming steps associated with tape-based processing - loading tapes, unloading tapes, physical handling, storage requirements, tape management, entering printer start commands - limited Pel Hughes' ability to scale operations and grow the business. "We needed to find the best way to eliminate our off-line data exchange using magnetic tapes," says Masson. "Not only were the tapes an inefficient way to generate print output, but we had the same issue when we needed to update our forms and images. It was a slow, costly, and cumbersome process."
It didn't take Pel Hughes long to determine that the best solution for them was technology from Solimar Systems. The Solimar Print/Director system contained everything they needed to overcome their print operation challenges. Print/Director's integrated TCP/IP connectivity modules created a common gateway for Pel Hughes' hardware devices, eliminating the labor intensive read/write magnetic tape-based operations. The TCP/IP protocol was used to receive network applications from multiple desktops and access the production printers. With the click of a mouse button, data streams could quickly be sent to printers over the network, completely eliminating the reading or writing of tapes. Print/Director's resource creation tool, XIMAGE™, enabled Pel Hughes to create and update forms and images from standard windows applications, also eliminating costly tape processing. Print/Director's XCHANGE™ modules provided the seamless conversion of legacy applications from Xerox DJDE data into PostScript and PDF, enabling industry standard printing and electronic document viewing. "XCHANGE has been very successful for us," claims Masson. Solimar's SOLindexer™ product provided new revenue opportunities by allowing the creation of indexed PDF files for their clients and placing them on CD-ROMs for easy searching. "Our clients love the CDs we create, and SOLindexer really improves on Acrobat's ability to find statements," states Masson.
Implementing the Solimar Print/Director system and SOLindexer has enabled Pel Hughes to operate more efficiently and expand their business. "Solimar's products have allowed us to dramatically improve our operations," explains Masson. "The combination of cutting costs, plus adding new client offerings with incremental revenue, has allowed us the flexibility to do more things and expand faster."
The benefits of enabling automated and streamlined business processes via the Solimar solution have been significant, including:
- Eliminated tape-based operations, reducing labor costs by $10,000 per year
- Reduced form and image development costs by $5,000 per year
- Increased output production by nearly 25% per year
- Decreased turnaround time for client jobs by 50%
- Boosted client retention revenue by $20,000 per year
- Saved over $5,000 per year in reprint operation costs
- Captured an additional 10% market share
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