ESP Printing & Direct Mail (ESP) is a direct mail advertising company with a full-service print shop. Founded in 1973, they started primarily as a doorknob delivery company, using the post office as direct mail. Printing operations began in the early 80s, to address customer requests of having both mail and print under one roof. ESP continues to thrive with right around 20 employees, supplying roughly 60% print and 40% direct mail.
I had a chance to discuss the implementation process with Chris Coltrin, General Manager from ESP Printing & Direct Mail.
Q: How has Covid-19 affected your business?
Chris: ESP Printing & Mail provides quite a bit of printing and marketing for upcoming events hosted by non-profit (YMCA type) organizations. Since those events were postponed, so have their print and mail jobs. In contrast, political printing & mailing campaigns are now in full swing for the Idaho primaries.
Q: How did you decide to go with Print Reach and Midnight?
Chris: ESP started with a legacy Print Reach product, MailShop, in 2006. The upgrade to MailShop was a big change back in that time. The need was generated from the desire to have betting estimating and tracking of large orders. Over the years ESP noticed the growing benefits and features that Midnight had to offer them, such as great support, frequent updates and being cloud-based.
One large benefit to Midnight was the fact that it was mobile, and can be used on the go, without requiring employees to login at their work desk in the office. Accessing their systems at home, on the road, or anywhere else has proved to help with productivity and faster turn-around times.
As the monthly rates of operating MailShop grew closer to that of Midnight, ESP ultimately decided to upgrade to Midnight, which offered them many more features, especially support with their databases which was now much easier to manage through Midnight with less touch points.
Q: When did you go live with Midnight?
Chris: ESP started using Midnight October of 2019.
Q: What are some of the critical parts of Midnight that help ESP get the job done?
Chris: Getting the proper information to the customer service team was very important, and that process needed to be addressed. Thanks to Midnight, the estimating and customer services workflow improved greatly.
Q: Is ESP using the scheduling tool within Midnight?
Chris: Currently ESP is taking full advantage of the cloud services provided by Midnight. Due to the company size and order volume, the scheduling feature may or may not be entirely required or justified – it depends. In general the scheduling feature is being used, but in a very basic manner.
Q: How would you describe the implementation process and customer support?
Chris: Having a Midnight expert from Print Reach at the shop, in person, was extremely helpful.
ESP was shown in detail how to operate the software and which procedures worked best for the company. Although ESP was undergoing staff changes in their customer service department at the time, they managed to receive and process a lot of information to get started working with Midnight. Midnight offered a huge plethora of information and resources, including weekly training videos which can be viewed on-demand.
Overall ESP recognized and saw the potential in upgrading to a new MIS software. They made the wise decision to jump at the perfect opportunity. This has not only helped them greatly with their business, but also made their daily workflow faster, easier and more efficient by using a modern MIS which offered an incredible set of features, but also great customer support and service.
Adam Witek
Director of Customer Experience at Print Reach