INDUSTRY: Banking
CUSTOMER GOAL: Expand bank statement rendering offerings by incorporating personalized color advertisements in the white space on bank statements.
PRODUCTS & SOLUTIONS:
- 6 bizhub® PRESS C8000 Color Digital Presses with Creo® External Print Controllers
- 2 bizbub PRO C6500 Color Digital Presses
- 1 bizhub PRO 1250 Black and White Production Print System
BACKGROUND: Since 1954, Financial Services, Inc. (FSI) has been providing quality back-end processing services for the community banking industry. Key to its business is the processing, printing and mailing of bank statements and related communications. Traditionally, these statements were printed using monochrome production print devices.
FSI saw an opportunity to leverage transpromotional marketing trends to help its community banks transform transactional documents such as invoices, statements and account information into marketing tools by incorporating advertisements in the white space available on documents.
Studies show that transpromotional techniques can help improve customer loyalty and generate new revenue streams. By combining variable data printing (VDP) with customer relationship management (CRM) and data mining technologies, FSI could add personalized color text or images to printed bank statements to up-sell or cross-sell third party products for its clients. To provide this new service, FSI needed to invest in new color digital presses that supported full color VDP and variable data document composition software. FSI planned to roll out the new service, called DocX, to a select group of customers as a trial in order to determine interest and demand for the service.
SOLUTION: Working with their local Konica Minolta dealer, Integrated Document Technologies (IDT), FSI installed one bizhub PRO C6500 Color Production Printer to begin testing the DocX service. During the trial run, FSI averaged 50,000 color impressions per month.
More importantly, the highly-personalized full-color interactive documents were created for approximately the same cost as traditional monochrome statements. The initial customer response was extremely positive with FSI’s banking clients wanting to add more color to their printed statements.
To meet the increased demand, the company added new color digital presses to its operations and upgraded to the Konica Minolta bizhub PRESS C8000 Color Digital Presses.
FSI now has six bizhub PRESS C8000s and two bizhub PRO C6500s that handle over 1.5 million color impressions monthly. Over a 24 month period, the company saw its DocX offering increase 10 fold as 75 percent of its customer base moved to color. This resulted in a 40 percent increase in revenues for FSI.
The bizhub PRESS C8000 provides FSI with the color quality and speeds required to meet its customers’ print demands. Having eight Konica Minolta Color Digital Presses enables FSI to easily manage and split print jobs between multiple devices allowing the company to work more efficiently and quickly to meet statement delivery deadlines. The bizhub PRESS C8000s are configured for large capacity storage with a roll-a-way cart and include the 4,630 sheet capacity vacuum paper feed unit which ensures that all paper moves smoothly through the system for optimal speed and minimal downtime.
FSI opted for Creo® Print Controllers for their bizhub PRESS C8000s to provide professional-grade color management and pre-press features, including greater automation and operator control. Creo technology also helps FSI optimize throughput with fast and powerful processing of their VDP jobs.
Today, FSI also uses the Konica Minolta bizhub PRO 1250 Black and White Production Print System for its monochrome statements. The system effortlessly handles a monthly volume of 200,000 impressions with minimal downtime.
DECISION FACTORS: FSI looked at a number of color digital presses including Océ and Xerox but selected Konica Minolta digital presses for their exceptional color quality, production speed, affordability and reliability. By moving to all Konica Minolta print production equipment, FSI can work with one trusted vendor from one exceptional reseller (IDT) for all its support, service and supplies needs. This has helped lower costs and simplified operations.
Utilizing the Konica Minolta bizhub PRESS C8000, FSI has quickly become a leader in transpromotional marketing for financial services companies.
