Midstates Group Improves Efficiency, Attracts New Business

Located in Aberdeen, South Dakota, Midstates Group employs about 400 people and generates $50 million in annual revenues under the umbrella of four different companies, the largest being Midstates Inc. Print & Media Solutions, a heatset web/sheetfed offset business that accounts for three-quarters of the company’s employees.

Part of the Midstates family is Quality Quick Print (QQP), a digital shop specializing in short-run, fast-turn digital and quick printing, as well as signs, large format, and apparel. This group has about 40 employees, generating about $5 million annually.

“As QQP grew,” says Justin Feickert, Midstates VP of Sales & Marketing, “we needed to improve our overall infrastructure to ensure that we could support our growth. We did a study of our job flow and found that it took 11 touches to process an average job. In today’s market conditions, that is simply unacceptable.”

The company was seeking an automated system that tied web-to-print storefronts directly into a back-end MIS system, Feickert explains. "We wanted something that was cloud based and user-friendly," he adds. "We also wanted a system that created a customer order portal regardless of the size of customer.”

The result of their search was the implementation of PressWise approximately 18 months ago, an end-to-end integrated solution from SmartSoft (Booth 352) that incorporates all of the necessary administrative workflow elements.

QQP branded its PressWise customer-facing online presence as MIM, Marketing Inventory Management (www.gotomim.com) in two flavors—MIM Pro, a fully customized and skinned customer web portal prepared for larger customers on a fee basis; and MIM Light, a less featured web portal, automatically created by the PressWise system for each customer, and provided to them at no additional charge.

“I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that this implementation has revolutionized our business,” Feickert comments. “We have gone from 11 touches down to two or three on most jobs— a 70% improvement. We can directly attribute 8-10% topline growth for QQP to this implementation, as well as a 20% increase in profitability,” he says.

Midstates Inc. Print & Media Solutions also has seen benefits. “We initially installed PressWise there to handle inventory and fulfillment,” Feickert says. “After implementation we have generated at least $250,000 in incremental revenue there, as well as more work for QQP from Midstates customers—and we are just getting started!”

Feickert cites the following example: A manufacturer of doors and windows with 1,500 distributed dealers has over 200 different products in a MIM Pro portal—everything from decals and magnets to product brochures. They can log in to see who is ordering what. Midstates fulfills 20-40 orders per day through this storefront, business it never would have had before and which adds up to about $100,000 in incremental annual revenue. In addition to revenue from printing, Midstates charges a monthly hosting and material storage fee, a per-box pick/pack fee, and markup on freight.

 “Because of PressWise we are getting work we never would have gotten before across the board,” Feickert concludes. “Especially for QQP, if you have to spend 15-20 minutes processing an order for business cards, you certainly can’t do it profitably. We have been able to gain more work from existing customers, enter new markets and even with reduced selling prices, our margins are better.”