'Show Me' State Shows Off

When the Missouri State Printing Center throws a party, the whole state is invited.

By MIKE LLEWELLYN &012;Nearly 150 representatives from agencies at every level of the Missouri state government converged on the State Printing Center recently for a long-awaited open house.

State Printer Gary Judd and his staff had been planning the event for two months—and they were not disappointed in the turnout.

"All together, the Department of Health brought in the most people," says Judd. "But we also got folks from the Department of Social Services, the Department of Natural Resources, several came from the executive branch, like the Secretary of State, the House of Representatives, and the Department of Agriculture."

The state of Missouri's 57-employee in-plant, located in Jefferson City, had never opened its doors or given demonstrations before, but Judd says he had his ear to the ground and the time had come.

"Our customer service representatives were telling us that they were getting a lot of questions about variable data and mailing," says Judd. "I said, 'Well, we've never really hosted an official open house, and we need to.' "

So last April, he and his staff sat down to figure out how to get representatives from the state's numerous agencies to pay a visit to the facility.

They decided to do it the old-fashioned way: Judd's staff sent out hundreds of color invitations designed by the creative graphics department and produced on one of the printing center's color copiers.

"We just let them know about some of the demonstrations that we'd be holding, and we asked them to RSVP," Judd says.

In addition to a tour winding through the facility, Judd says the handful of demonstrations were designed to bring customers up to speed on the shop's capabilities.

The first thing customers laid eyes on were the shop's three Didde web presses.

"After we had the web press demonstration, there was a demonstration of heat-sensitive inks, and then mailing equipment," says Judd. The tour provided an opportunity to show off the shop's tabbing and addressing equipment, as well as its platemaking and bindery services.

"We also showed them how to redesign their packages to get better mail rates," he adds.

But the best response, says Judd, was to variable printing.

"We showed them how we could blast through whatever variable data they needed, and do inline tabbing and bulk mailing," he says.

Judd reports that his operation picked up several new customers who previously weren't aware of the in-plant's variable data printing capabilities, or some of its other services.

"The Ethics Committee sends out cards every year. They've been printing them up, then sending them through laser jets," he explains. "And there were three types of letters. So what it took them a staff of six to eight people to do, we now do with one person."

At the end of the tour, Judd and his team were ready with informational packets for customers to take with them as a reference.

After The Open House

Once the big day was over, though, the work was far from done. Judd spent the first week in July catching up with his guests to get some feedback.

"We sent out a survey thanking them for attending," he says. "And it included an 11-question questionnaire asking things like 'Was the tour educational? Were all of your questions answered? And are there any applications for which you could use variable data?' "

Judd says that as the responses came rolling back in, he and his staff put together a summary of the data they had gathered.

"So we took all of the responses we got, and followed up with our own response," he says.

The shop plans to use this organized data to streamline its services. With so much feedback, Judd now says he plans to hold an open house once every two years.

"We were very pleased with the results," says Judd. "Especially because several new pieces of business have come to us."