How Do You Rate Against Commercial Printers?

The Allstate Print Communication Center sought the answer through NAPL's Management Plus program. The result? The in-plant won NAPL's top award for management excellence.

"Today's in-plant must compete effectively with commercial printers or a commercial printer will take them over, and they'll be out of business."

That's what Robert Tierney has observed over the years as Print Communications director for Allstate Insurance, in Wheeling, Ill.

"We've always known that and sought various ways to measure our performance," he says. "But we found that the business assessment programs tailored specifically to in-plants didn't provide us with insights into where we stood as a competitor with commercial printers."

The Allstate Print Communication Center, which ranked number one on the most recent IPG Top 50, joined the National Association for Printing Leadership (NAPL) eight years ago. That's when it was introduced to the Association's Management Plus program, which helps printers evaluate their management performance against accepted industry standards in every critical area. This includes financial performance, internal control systems, marketing/sales, vendor relations, business planning, human resources, environmental/safety concerns, quality control and community/industry affairs.

The Management Plus program is designed to help printers of all sizes—including in-plants—gain insights into their company's strengths and weaknesses, so they can expand what works and correct what does not. In addition to using the program as a vehicle for self-evaluation, participating printers can also enter the annual Management Plus awards competition.

"For us, Management Plus became an effective way to measure ourselves against the competition—but not just any competition," says Tierney. "We knew that Management Plus participants included commercial printers who had achieved elite status in terms of management excellence, and that's what we were aiming for. We participated for several consecutive years, using the information we gained about where we were falling short, and working to improve those areas. That gave us a reliable road map for improvement and helped strengthen our organization."

Reliable Benchmark

Allstate, which provides 24-hour service and shipping to more than 40,000 locations, went on to win numerous Management Plus Awards, including six consecutive Gold Awards from 1996 to 2001, and the competition's highest honor, the William K. Marrinan Hall of Fame Award, in 2002.

"Over time, how we performed in the Management Plus assessment became our benchmark and validated that we were indeed a viable competitor, with a level of management in all key areas that compared with the upper echelons of commercial printing," says Tierney.

He notes that the insights Allstate gained through Management Plus "made it clear to us that we were also in a prime position to insource, and we established our Northbrook Services commercial printing company in 1997. We're now competing—and very successfully—in the commercial arena."

Tierney says he would recommend Management Plus to other in-plant managers as a means of assessing where they stand versus commercial printing standards.

"Apply the Management Plus assessment process to your own organization, and use the resulting score as an indication of how you can compete in the commercial arena," he says. "If you get a 75, you have some work to do. If you get a 90, you know you're in a good competitive position."

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For more information on NAPL's Management Plus program, contact Robin Schabacker, program coordinator, at (800) 642-6275, ext. 1307 or e-mail:

rschabacker@napl.org