With over 55 years of printing and marketing services experience, Adams Direct And Media Services is a Cross Media Marketing Solutions, Variable Data Printing, Digital Printing, and Mailing service provider. Today the company uses cutting edge technologies, best-in-class equipment, and boasts a staff of committed marketing specialists who believe “good” is not enough and “better” is always possible.
Adams has recently switched from Mail-Shop to Print Reach’s Midnight MIS.
I had a chance to discuss the implementation process of Midnight MIS with Daniel Falkowitz, VPO/IT of Adams Direct And Media Services.
Q: Where did you first hear about Mail-Shop?
D: We have been a Mail-Shop customer for over 15 years now. I believe it was during a mailing convention, where Jesse, our company’s President, first met Chris Huber, CEO of Print Reach. He was convinced that Mail-Shop would be the perfect tool for our business, and the decision to integrate it with our company has proven to be the best choice for us, as we have been very successful with it over the years.
Q: What led you to Print Reach and Midnight?
D: Midnight is a modern MIS system with much more powerful features than anything we have seen before. For us it was an obvious choice to upgrade, as Midnight is built for the future and offered all the features we needed to improve our workflow. We knew about Print Reach in the past and how good their software and support team is, so the choice to upgrade to Midnight was an easy one to make.
Q: What were some of the deciding factors for switching from Mail-Shop to Midnight?
D: While Mail-Shop served us well for many years, we saw the new features of Midnight MIS and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to switch over. We’ve never used the scheduling capabilities in Mail-Shop, but now we are in Midnight. Inventory management, work orders, and estimations are so much quicker and easier to use in comparison. We can easily access anything we need with very few touchpoints, taking everything to the next level of comfort and accessibility. It allows us to make things a lot more transparent at company meetings. Account managers would know where their jobs are in real-time, without having to spend time looking for them. It all boils down to Midnight’s powerful database. Now we have the capability to have a clear view and see exactly where we are profiting and making money, and where we aren’t.
Q: Tell me about getting your operators to clock in/out of jobs.
D: Our production team consists of 30 individuals. We use Microsoft Surface Pros as Kiosks for our Shop Floor Data Collection. There is a main area with 3 kiosks and all together we have 45 employees. Thanks to Midnight we are logging everything. Every job, which the operator is assigned to what, how long a task takes, etc. All of it is easy to access and pull up at any given time, making our workflow that much efficient. We have access to much more data now.
Q: What would you say to someone still on the fence about switching over from Mail-Shop to Midnight?
D: Does anyone still use the original iPhone? Probably not, you have to get with the times and upgrade. I would recommend doing it within a span of a few months and not during busy seasons.
Q: Do you have any tips and tricks for other companies to get into Midnight?
D: The most important thing is to know your costs. Find out where you can spend more, and where you can save. Shop Floor Data Collection comes in handy here, as you can see exactly how long it takes for operators to work on any number of specific jobs.
Q: When did you go live with Midnight?
D: We went live with Midnight on August 11th, 2020.
Q: What are some of the critical parts of Midnight that help your company get the job done?
D: Setting up jobs and pricing is much easier for us now that we can allow ourselves to focus more time on production.
Q: How would you describe the implementation process and customer support?
D: Our implementation specialists were simply awesome. The whole team was great, and they know the product well. Any issues we were having were quickly taken care of.
Q: How has Covid-19 affected your business?
D: Covid has hit the printing industry very hard, and many shops stalled. We were fortunate enough to be able to work from home. Our main client was bombarded with so much work, we had to try and cram 6 months or work into 3. This was made possible thanks to Midnight, and we actually managed to pull everything off according to their needs. I don’t think we would have been able to do so without Midnight. We implemented at the right time.
Q: Did you go out shopping before you decided to migrate?
D: Yes, we looked at a variety of different options and weighed each one accordingly. What ultimately convinced me was the trust and relationship between Adams and Print Reach, with our past experiences with Mail-Shop. After some consultation, they assured me that I was picking the right choice going forward, and I did. We soon found ourselves wanting Midnight. After using it for a few months, we wished we could have been on it a lot sooner. I base my decisions on analyzing the facts, and Midnight gave us everything we didn’t have before.
Q: Who was on your implementation team?
D: It was just me. I overlooked the entire process, from items, to pricing – everything. I found the process easy enough for me to undertake, and all went well according to my expectations.
We had two implementation specialists, and they were both fantastic along the entire way.
Q: What are your plans for Midnight and 2020? Are there any goals you are still interested in reaching?
D: We have a long list of things to accomplish, such as improving our templates, and improving the way we have been handling our accounting. We believe Midnight will make things much easier for us.
Q: Are you currently using or implementing Credit Card processing?
D: We just recently started doing credit card payments. For many years we have refused, but now we accept PayPal for our payments. We are definitely interested in expanding this by making things quicker with fewer touchpoints. That is one of our goals, and I am certain Midnight will assist us.
“We are extremely pleased with Midnight and impressed by how the implementation process went. The team of implementation specialists was ready to help us every step of the way, and I could not have asked for anything better. Our workflow has improved in many ways: faster databases and modern features that will keep our business strong for a long time,” said Daniel Falkowitz, VPO/IT of Adams Direct And Media Services. “The only regret I have is that we didn’t switch over to Midnight much, much sooner.”
Michael Wemhoff
Marketing Graphic Designer
