BFC Adapts to Meet Modern Workflow Demands with Canon Digital Printing Solutions

Batavia, Ill.-based BFC is a family-owned, 40-year-old print and fulfillment company with expertise in managing and delivering business communications. Focusing on the financial services and insurance industries, BFC services its clients via efficient processes and quality printing. After identifying its clients’ specific needs, the company provides custom workflows to streamline the entire process from job submission through printing and fulfillment, all within very strict service-level agreements (SLAs) that often require sameday turnarounds.

Over the years, BFC evolved into a producer of digital print. In doing so, it needed to innovate and find a way to transition from printing short runs of non-personalized, versioned letters that used offset printed shells, and black-and-white digital imprinting to delivering short-run, full-color versioned documents with next-day service. Canon (Booth 1213) digital presses afforded BFC the necessary tools to accomplish this.

“We started out with one machine printing black and white, but now we have 13 Canon digital presses,” says Matt Novak, VP of BFC and one of three second-generation Novak brothers. “Almost everything we print today is personalized in some way, whether it’s a simple phone number on a versioned document or complete contracts with every word being different.”

The company drops roughly 100,000 pieces of mail into the postal stream each day, generating about 300,000 impressions daily with multiple-page documents being inserted into a single envelope. To meet the requirements of its SLAs, BFC relies on its Canon presses - including two recently added imagePRESS C10000VP digital devices - to produce fully variable, fast turnaround, quality print output.

Three BFC operators run the full arsenal of Canon production machines, which include two Canon imagePRESS C10000VP digital color presses, one Canon imagePRESS C7011VP digital color press, one Canon imagePRESS C6010VP digital color press, two Océ BLM 550 Pro Stitchers, one Canon imagePRESS 1135+ digital monochrome press, and three Canon imagePRESS 1125 monochrome presses. The digital technology has such a positive impact on BFC’s workflow effi - ciency that the company was able to dramatically cut shifts from five years ago.

“The quality produced by the C10000VP is so impressive that BFC’s lead press operator - a former offset operator - couldn’t believe the quality that was coming from the digital technology,” Novak adds. “These presses print with a level of quality that was once only achievable in the offset world.”

There is a large and growing opportunity for production color digital printing in the U.S. In 2015, the U.S. cut-sheet production color digital print volume hit about 105 billion impressions. According to InfoTrends’ U.S. Production Printing & Copying Market Forecast, this volume is expected to demonstrate a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.9% over the forecast period, surpassing 147 billion impressions by 2020.

Consistent with industry trends, BFC is beginning to experience a resurge in print purchasing volume from long-term clients. As it continues to diversify, the company looks forward to penetrating new markets - made possible because of its new Canon presses.