Success Strategies from the Top In-plant

No in-plant can thrive without a strategic plan. IPG asked one of the most successful in-plants, the Allstate Print Communication Center, to share its strategies for the years ahead.

The IPG Top 50 may be taking a year off, but the in-plants on that list never rest. One of those working hardest to improve and expand its business is the Allstate Print Communication Center (APCC), which ranked number one on last December's Top 50.

Allstate's Wheeling, Ill.-based operation, with 365 employees and a $110 million budget, is a technologically advanced operation with a thriving insourcing business. APCC has been recognized for its success by NAPL, which awarded it six consecutive Gold Awards, as well as its highest honor, the 2002 William K. Marrinan Hall of Fame Award.

APCC's growth did not come about by chance. Only through careful strategic planning and follow-through has the operation been able to expand to become the dominant in-plant in this industry.

To give in-plants everywhere an idea of how Allstate envisions the future and where it plans to direct its energies, IPG asked the in-plant to discuss its top 10 strategies for the next three years.

Allstate's Top 10 Strategies

1

Expense/Financial Management

We intend to exceed financial commitments and ensure cost-effective delivery for our products and services. As they say, we will "do more with less."

2

Color Management

We will enhance our color process with established Standard Operation Procedures (SOPs). This process will assist us in maintaining a constant ink color procedure.

3

New Work Migration

We plan to work with internal direct marketing and customer experience customers to migrate new print applications into the APCC that are currently being produced at commercial print vendors.

4

Quality Six Sigma

We will implement quality process improvements utilizing measurement and Six Sigma tools to support continued efficiencies.

5

New MIS System

We plan to utilize print management technology for workflow improvement, scheduling and cost management in order to support our business strategies.

6

Service-centric Customer Service

We will enable Allstate's business goals by delivering supporting technology, compliance, accounting, document services and information management.

7

Fulfillment Transformation

Our goal is to provide comprehensive value-added fulfillment solutions and enhance the customer order experience.

8

Insourcing

As we have been doing successfully for years, we will continue to generate revenue from insourcing by utilizing excess equipment capacity to reduce our cost and generate income for the corporation.

9

Digital Print Reinvention

We will work with our enterprise customers to design an Internet-based print-on-demand solution that allows both internal and external customers the ability to order personalized monochrome and color printed items.

10

Benchmarking/Commercial Outsourcing

We intend to utilize outsourcing as a way to benchmark external market prices.