Vpress’ solutions have been instrumental in helping Apogee enable their customers to maintain ‘a full spectrum of customer communications’ throughout the pandemic.

With huge swathes of the population working remotely, Vpress’s Coreprint programme has demonstrated its scalability as Apogees clients went from a few jobs per month that needed to harness its full capabilities, through to 1000 as the virus spread.

‘When Covid came along Apogee suddenly realised they had a lot of corporate clients that usually printed the majority of their output within their office environments or would draw down on older pre-printed brochures or marketing collateral to maintain communications with clients,’ explained Neil Bridgland, key account manager at Vpress, adding. ‘That all changed of course as Covid-19 meant staff had to be sent home to protect them.’

Louise Newton, head of DDS pre sales at Apogee explained the challenge her company faced. ‘We are Europe’s largest multi-brand provider of managed print services, document and process technology and outsource services. The key value we represent to our clients is that we offer a 360 degree solution for our clients when it comes to print-based communications and marketing –– both internal and external. And as such with the pandemic causing such seismic shifts in how our clients work, we needed to rapidly develop our services to ensure total continuity of support and get them up and running almost overnight.’

Ms Newton explained that Apogee’s core support needs from this point were for a solution that was secure, and could be trusted as it was rolled out to their clients with the goal of maintaining business continuity. It also needed it to connect their clients through to its print operations –– and in turn join its separate sites into one virtual hub, while integrating with its MIS and workflow systems. Finally, Apogee needed a platform that would be scalable as they pivoted to meet the challenges of the pandemic and provide a new suite of communications solutions to their customers.

Apogee were using it in two ways to support their clients, several of which are major financial services providers. The first was so they could use unique artwork, already created, and add it to an existing job specification–– so in this application it was a job submission tool.

The other critical way the company was applying the technology was to deploy its Elements module, which gives their client the ability to take artwork and tailor it as they need to –– based on the format it will be printed in, whether it is a letter or an A4 landscape brochure.

Mr Bridgland added, ‘Once the job has been tailored and created into a bespoke item it is then channelled through Apogee’s print operation.

‘The outcome of harnessing the full capabilities of the Coreprint web-to-print system means they are now doing a huge variety of work with clients that they had previously never done, right from printing through to fulfilment’”

Ms Newton explained that the value that has been delivered to Apogee’s clients is their teams now have a virtual print room to call on whenever they need it. For example, when they want to send a prospective client a brochure, they simply log-in to the portal, choose its format and then press go. They critically have maintained that communication and confidence link with existing clients and maintained the ability to educate and inform prospective ones.

‘Apogee were attracted to our proposition and technology due to its flexibility. And that is not just in its usability and application scope, but importantly, connectivity through to its print rooms,’ Mr Bridgland concluded. ‘The value we added to its operation is providing Apogee with a tool that helps their customer’s overcome key challenges and that provides solutions to communication issues that have been created by the Pandemic. It underpins their One Source platform and means Apogee can continue to grow and develop their client services portfolio with confidence.’