When I first became a business owner, I was hyper-focused on getting that first printing order, then the next and then the next—always with excellent follow-through and service to retain those valuable clients. Over time, we added new ways to support our clients, developing a suite of cloud-based technologies and hosted managed services. What I realized along the way is that while sales growth is good, scaling is better.
Growth generally entails adding revenue which could mean that at roughly the same pace, you might be adding costs and resources—equipment, employees, raw materials, production and office space and so on. Scaling involves creating a business model and systems that lets you add clients and revenue at a much greater rate than cost. Technology, of course, is key to efficient and effective scaling.
We leverage scaling in two ways: 1) Our cloud technologies enable us to quickly bring on new clients as well as expand the volumes and types of communications we produce for each client and 2) Our cloud-based platforms and hosted managed services enable our clients to scale their communications, payments, and HOA elections as they add clients, locations, brands, products and more.
That’s the beauty of our Expresso™ technology, allowing us to grow right alongside our clients.
Clients want to scale
We are finding that our ability to scale is a key draw as companies look to improve customer experience, especially if they too have built a business model to serve the one-to-many needs of their clients. We simplify the complexity with a single system for print/mail, email and texting, plus give clients the ability to quickly onboard new customers, often by simply updating a table and with little intervention from us.
Take RealManage, LLC, the third-largest HOA/condo development management firm, which recently joined a number of property management companies in choosing our integrated solution for developing and distributing homeowner communications. With more than 3,000 residential associations and 1 million+ homeowners, RealManage is expanding through acquisitions as well as by providing technology-enabled services including owner communications to other property management companies and self-managed communities. RealManage needed a partner with state-of-the-art capabilities for handling high volumes and a wide variety of communications at a rapidly increasing rate.
Scaling is a must-have for many healthcare clients, too, especially revenue cycle management firms that handle patient financial communications and payments for many providers. Meduit, one of the 10 largest healthcare RCM firms, uses Expresso to produce and distribute about 2 million print and electronic patient billing statements and letters a month for health systems and physician practices. Each provider has its own content, logo, templates, payment policies and disclosures.
Automation saves time, money
We’re always looking at ways to improve client service, including automating work tickets for production, billing reports sent to accounting and some quality assurance processes. To streamline client processes, we’ve created business rules for rejected records to automatically stop those associated communications from being sent and returned, saving postage and printing costs. Same with rejected emails. And our business rules also generate reports that tell the client why a mailed piece or email was rejected.
Team and culture also critical to scaling
While we focus on smart use of technology and automation, at the end of the day, people are critical to succeeding at scaling. If you don’t have a good team, it’s very tough to scale your business.
Our business pillars are service, technology and execution. People are needed to provide great customer service, people build our technology and production employees execute on getting quality print communications out on time. We always want to see if we can get there faster and more efficiently, but at our core, we’re a service company, which relies on people.
Personal investments matter
We are rolling out development initiatives and programs that are preparing our employees to continue succeeding at a rapidly scaling business. For example, one of my interests is meditation, and I lead a group meditation on Wednesday mornings. We started with 20 employees onsite, then opened it to off-site employees, friends and families via online video access.
We’ve also been running a leadership program for our management team designed to provide us with a new set of tools for creating a culture of commitment and accountability.
I am a firm believer in making sure we invest in our employees to help them improve their work life and their home life. People who are in their best place do their best work.