Guys that Get It

Finally getting back to home base after averaging maybe 2 days a week in the office for the past couple months, it's great to put fingers to the keys and pound out a blog entry. I know I'm behind and will work on catching up. There'll be more to follow on the people and companies I'll mention here and in the next installment or two, but I just wanted to give you quick takes on some guys that get it.

First up is Scott Bussert, VP of Operations at Datamart Direct in Bloomingdale, IL. Bussert's parents started the company some 35 years ago in their garage. Now it's a sizable facility replete with a full-on mailing operation, a pair of HP Indigo 7000 presses, a recently installed Xerox iGen4 (which replaces a couple of iGen3s) and a Xerox Nuvera 144 EA. Nice boxes all, but this is not about hardware. And as you know, nothing in digital printing is really about the presses—this ain't offset printing, after all.

What it is about is perspective. "A lot of companies that do printing are (after reading lots of articles in magazines and on the Web) trying to promote themselves as marketing services companies," says Bussert. "We really think of ourselves as a technology company that addresses a variety of customers' communications needs."

To Bussert and his team, technology is at the core. Sure, most things wind up being printed and mailed, but the value comes in solving a customer's problem. Take for example, the large motor club that does business in every state. It had 300 skids of pre-printed forms. 300 skids! Member kits were essentially hand-assembled packets of pages—because the content, for say the club's policy for towing, differed by state due to various regulations—all stuffed into #10 envelopes and mailed. Add in other features such as roadside repairs, bail bond cards and the like, and the pages piled up fast, along with the cost to package and mail them.