07.19.16
Canon Solutions America, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Canon U.S.A., Inc., announced its continued support of PCI Group Inc., a nationally-ranked mission-critical document delivery leader. PCI Group’s rise in business has been directly impacted by inkjet technologies introduced by Canon Solutions America. Over the course of the last year, PCI Group took its organization to new levels of productivity and embarked on a successful inkjet journey by installing two Océ JetStream production presses, an Océ ColorStream 3900, and, most recently, the Océ VarioPrint i300.
Since its founding in 1970 as a family-owned and operated company, PCI Group has remained at the forefront of the document delivery industry. Specializing in regulated industries that include collection agencies, financial institutions, insurance companies, and more, the need to meet mission-critical communications requirements remains paramount to PCI Group’s sustained success.
Over the course of its history PCI Group has adapted to an ever-changing business climate. In its first 20 years as a company, it focused primarily on data entry and creating large scale databases, and found success throughout the marketplace with technical expertise and an ability to turn large low bid projects into intricate applications. Yet as demands and trends shifted, so too did the mission of PCI Group.
Interested in expanding the business and its offerings, PCI Group president Christian Kropac sought out the mailing industry as the company’s next pursuit.
“We performed data entry and created databases containing millions of address records, but as the industry evolved, it seemed the logical next step for us was to pursue the mailing industry,” said Kropac. “Of course the transition from the data entry world to the mailing business was one that took time, but we knew the opportunities were endless.”
With that transition came the need for an investment in a more robust in-house printing fleet. This expansion into direct mail hit some barriers along the way, particularly with the market crash in 2008 that had its negative and resonating impact on the industry as a whole.
“After making it through the challenging market crash, we knew our next step was to get involved with the emerging technologies for full color printing; however, we knew it needed to be cost effective as our clients didn’t always see the underlying value of color” said Kropac. “Our customers convey quality but want it at a fair price; at the time the only full color solution was toner-based which was very costly. Inkjet wasn’t quite there yet, and although it was cheaper, it didn’t have the required quality. Even still, we knew the future of print was inkjet and that its time was right around the corner.”
In 2015, after a monumental contract win set PCI Group up for exponential growth, the company dove into the rapidly evolving world of inkjet by installing two Océ JetStreams. Once the first Océ JetStream was installed in June 2015, it immediately helped create enhancements in PCI Group’s uptime and efficiency. The second one followed in October of the same year as the demand continued to soar. By November of 2015, PCI Group worked with Canon Solutions America’s Production Print Solutions division to upgrade its print fleet to include the Océ ColorStream 3900 and Océ VarioPrint i300.
“Our decision to go to inkjet was based off a number of things, but most importantly we knew the inkjet revolution was going to redefine the industry when it became cost effective and when the quality significantly improved,” said Kropac.
“Essentially we went from a toner-based roll-to-fold environment, to a full color roll-to-roll world in two months, and haven’t looked back since,” he added. “In our toner-based world we typically had to offset print the letter shells and print in black toner, thus limiting the offering and flexibility to our clients. In our new inkjet world, all backgrounds are printed full color on the fly at the same time as letter copy – suffice to say, our offerings are now unlimited to our valued customers.”
According to PCI Group, in the three months following the installations of both the Océ ColorStream 3900 and Océ VarioPrint i300, the company went from printing 250 million to 1.3 billion sheets of paper a year. PCI Group is now printing close to two million pieces of paper a day on the Océ ColorStream 3900 while producing nearly 1.2 million pieces of mail each day – an astounding increase from the 400,000 pieces of mail it was producing before its most recent inkjet installations.
Since its founding in 1970 as a family-owned and operated company, PCI Group has remained at the forefront of the document delivery industry. Specializing in regulated industries that include collection agencies, financial institutions, insurance companies, and more, the need to meet mission-critical communications requirements remains paramount to PCI Group’s sustained success.
Over the course of its history PCI Group has adapted to an ever-changing business climate. In its first 20 years as a company, it focused primarily on data entry and creating large scale databases, and found success throughout the marketplace with technical expertise and an ability to turn large low bid projects into intricate applications. Yet as demands and trends shifted, so too did the mission of PCI Group.
Interested in expanding the business and its offerings, PCI Group president Christian Kropac sought out the mailing industry as the company’s next pursuit.
“We performed data entry and created databases containing millions of address records, but as the industry evolved, it seemed the logical next step for us was to pursue the mailing industry,” said Kropac. “Of course the transition from the data entry world to the mailing business was one that took time, but we knew the opportunities were endless.”
With that transition came the need for an investment in a more robust in-house printing fleet. This expansion into direct mail hit some barriers along the way, particularly with the market crash in 2008 that had its negative and resonating impact on the industry as a whole.
“After making it through the challenging market crash, we knew our next step was to get involved with the emerging technologies for full color printing; however, we knew it needed to be cost effective as our clients didn’t always see the underlying value of color” said Kropac. “Our customers convey quality but want it at a fair price; at the time the only full color solution was toner-based which was very costly. Inkjet wasn’t quite there yet, and although it was cheaper, it didn’t have the required quality. Even still, we knew the future of print was inkjet and that its time was right around the corner.”
In 2015, after a monumental contract win set PCI Group up for exponential growth, the company dove into the rapidly evolving world of inkjet by installing two Océ JetStreams. Once the first Océ JetStream was installed in June 2015, it immediately helped create enhancements in PCI Group’s uptime and efficiency. The second one followed in October of the same year as the demand continued to soar. By November of 2015, PCI Group worked with Canon Solutions America’s Production Print Solutions division to upgrade its print fleet to include the Océ ColorStream 3900 and Océ VarioPrint i300.
“Our decision to go to inkjet was based off a number of things, but most importantly we knew the inkjet revolution was going to redefine the industry when it became cost effective and when the quality significantly improved,” said Kropac.
“Essentially we went from a toner-based roll-to-fold environment, to a full color roll-to-roll world in two months, and haven’t looked back since,” he added. “In our toner-based world we typically had to offset print the letter shells and print in black toner, thus limiting the offering and flexibility to our clients. In our new inkjet world, all backgrounds are printed full color on the fly at the same time as letter copy – suffice to say, our offerings are now unlimited to our valued customers.”
According to PCI Group, in the three months following the installations of both the Océ ColorStream 3900 and Océ VarioPrint i300, the company went from printing 250 million to 1.3 billion sheets of paper a year. PCI Group is now printing close to two million pieces of paper a day on the Océ ColorStream 3900 while producing nearly 1.2 million pieces of mail each day – an astounding increase from the 400,000 pieces of mail it was producing before its most recent inkjet installations.