Founded in 1991, Advantage Printing began as a small printing company that provided its customers with a laminated, high quality business card.

The size and shape of a regular credit card, the laminated business card provided a unique and visible product that very quickly established a market presence for all Advantage products in the Real Estate and related services markets. Vigilant to customer needs, Advantage has offered, over the years, a significantly greater and more varied product line to a steadily expanding market and, since its inception, has grown at a rate of 28% per year.

Before Press-sense iWay was introduced into the company by Cohesion Inc, a leading American systems integrator, in January of 2003, Advantage Printing offered its customers such products as laminated, photo business cards, Quick*start Cards, Post Cards, Photo Stationery, Envelopes, and custom playing cards. Advantage Printing then developed and maintained a technical lead over its competitors by the early adoption of digital offset printing, variable color graphic and photographic printing, Variable Data printing, web-based ordering and publishing, a PDF workflow, automated production control etc.

The next step for Advantage Printing was to implement Press-sense iWay, which Advantage Printing immediately acknowledged to be integral to the web-based production of their print work. In practice, Press-sense iWay has replaced two typesetters and data entry personnel that would otherwise have been employed. In addition, errors that are generated internally have been dramatically reduced due to direct customer control of the printed product. This has resulted in a re-run rate that is now approximately 1% compared to the original rate of 8%. Most importantly, the speed of production and quality of the work resulting from the production flow has allowed Advantage Printing to grow at a rate of 36% in 2003, without additional personnel or workstations.

The Advantage Printing customer base is deeply rooted in the Real Estate market. Prior to implementing Press-sense iWay, Jobs were manually received via fax order forms or by manually entering the orders and providing electronic files through such media as the cd-rom. Since introducing Press-sense iWay, all print material is purchased online.

With the implementation of Press-sense iWay, Advantage Printing customers have acknowledged the following benefits:

Print Provider ‘round the clock’ availability and world-wide accessibility

• A user-friendly’ Job ordering mechanism
• Online Job Proofing
• Instant pricing feedback
• Known product availability
• Consistency in the high quality of the finished product

With Press-sense iWay, Advantage customers can now order printed products 24 hours a day, 365 days a year without the intervention of the Customer Service or the Art department. The Press-sense iWay interface allows Advantage Printing customers to work within the confines of their schedule, without the necessity of contacting the various Advantage Printing offices. Difficulties resulting from differences in time zones, the need to fax order forms, and phones calls have been significantly reduced. "Since introducing Press-sense iWay, we have also discovered that for 75% of the orders, the typesetting and order entry departments are no longer needed", continued Dave Huewe. "In addition, Press-sense iWay has taken the Quick*Start product line completely out of the hands of the Art Department in 80% of the cases". Though company goals and targets have remained the same at Advantage Printing, the policy now is to gradually migrate additional products over to Press-sense iWay.

The Advantage Printing marketing focus has basically remained the same with the exception of Advantage’s ability to serve the wholesale, 4-color process printing market. Presently, Advantage is able to market to that segment of small printers without 4-color process capability by allowing them to order that type of printing, online, via Press-sense iWay.

Research into customer motivation has led Advantage Printing to conclude that their customers are extremely interested in the ability to quickly and accurately purchase their printed media online, at any time of the day or night as afforded by Press-sense iWay. In addition, these customers show a great deal of enthusiasm for the tracking and reporting abilities that Press-sense iWay provides for their orders as well as the ease of use and the speed at which they can buy and receive finished goods. To assist their customers in working with Press-sense iWay, Advantage has created an online tutorial and has established a telephone-based customer and technical support service.

Currently, Advantage Printing works with approximately 2600 users from a wide variety of organizations. These users range in ability from those who have relatively no experience in publishing documents to those with a significant amount of experience. Some users represent Wholesale Print Buyers who upload completed PDF documents for print, while a significant number of users purchase printed products that are based upon templates designed by Advantage Printing.

"We have benefited from Press-sense iWay by its relative ease of use, by the ability our customers now have for tracking all of their orders at any given moment, and by our customer’s ability to easily repeat orders without re-keying information. No less important is our ability to communicate and receive orders from our customers, over the web, bearing in mind that prior to Press-sense iWay, we had to have all of our orders faxed in.

All of these benefits are extremely important as they allow us to continue the growth and development of our business at a reduced rate of capital expenditure and overhead. Most important are our customers who are extremely impressed by our ability to have their materials printed by the next business day." Dave Huewe