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Questions and Answers

Q: Can you talk a bit about the pricing model? Are you charging by number pieces that come out of the fullfillment center? Are there separate charges for the bells and whistles, i.e. on-line access, document management, DAM, etc.

A: [Eric Rountree] We charge a setup fee to create the website and then alteration fees for changes to the website after the initial set-up.  We break down fees for storage, packing and shipping and handling separately.  We do charge separately for the bells and whistles, like the document management and the variable templates. 

A: [Dean Hanisko] For the most part, we will charge clients a set up fee to build and populate the system to get started. We will also charge a modest transition fee to move the materials into our warehouse. We then charge a monthly management fee (this includes customer service as well as software maintenance).

Web to print – DAM and Document Management are separate modules and we do charge separately for them.

Q: On a pick and pull - do you charge per item to be picked and pulled or total cost per pull no matter how many items?

A: [Eric Rountree] We typically don't charge per item, but per box per location.

A: [Dean Hanisko] Most of our contracts are based on a $x per order plus $x per line.

Q: How are you competitively positioned against a company that is primarily fulfillment services as opposed to primarily (or orignally) print?  

A: [Eric Rountree] We have been competitive with other fulfillment only houses.  I think that we have an edge as we have several revenue streams against their one. 

A: [Dean Hanisko] I feel we are indeed. This part of our business is growing quickly and to Eric’s point, fulfillment of printed materials is much like fulfilling widgets and the same methodology applies. If you are good at it, you can compete with most.

Q: What is the compensation structure for your sales people (esp since the sales cycle is so long)?  Salary + commission?  

A: [Eric Rountree] We pay our sales people on a salary + commission structure depending on the scope of the program.

A: [Dean Hanisko] Our reps receive a draw and commission. Commission on these types of programs is set up on a declining scale. We have found reps will become complacent trying to live off the mature business rather than bring in new business. We need to motivate them to bring in new business, so we structure most of the commission early in the relationship.

Q: What are the problems with having different software vendors for print, mail and fulfillment?

A: [Eric Rountree] We have one vendor solution in EFI, so I am not sure about how hard it would be to try and integrate different vendors systems.  I can say that it is very important to make sure that you go from the web to your MIS directly without manually entering orders. 

A: [Dean Hanisko] Integration – at the core of the systems. Getting them to play nice in the sandbox – exchanging data in a meaningful way.

Q: To sell to a new company/prospect, who is the best person to initiate the 1st call to? Do you have any sales promotional material to support the initial contact? And what is it?   

A: [Eric Rountree] For us it has been a two pronged approach.  Sometimes we work with the person in charge of the actual day to day ordering of the fulfillment products and other times we contact the VP's at the Marketing and purchasing levels. 

A: [Dean Hanisko] Contacts are VP Marketing, VP Sales, other stakeholders.   We have created a full blown brochure on fulfillment and we also have a web to print system which allows our sales people to log in and create one to one marketing pieces to implement a “drip” campaign.

EFI (www.efi.com) is the world leader in digital imaging and print management solutions for commercial and enterprise printing. EFI's award-winning technologies offer document management tools from creation to print, including high fidelity color and black and white Fiery® print servers that can output up to 2000 ppm; superwide format printing with VUTEk; powerful production workflow and print management information software solutions for increased performance and cost efficiency; and an array of business-critical enterprise and mobile printing solutions. EFI maintains 22 offices worldwide.

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