Moonlight Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is a print services provider offering small businesses a one-stop solution for all their printing, mailing and document management needs. Founded in 1985 in Bend, Oregon, Moonlight prides itself on being the Swiss Army Knife of print and mail, with a state-of-the-art print facility and services that range from printing and imaging to mailing and Electronic Bill Presentment and Payments (EBPP).
More recently, in its efforts to keep up with changes in customer demands and provide customers with innovative solutions for all their communication needs, Moonlight moved over half of its operations to Vancouver, Washington and expanded its services to include a wider range of communication solutions, including brochures and pamphlets, flyers and postcards, menus, door hangers, and full color newsletters.
As an outsourced print services provider, Moonlight BPO cultivates collaborative relationships with clients, with documents going through several levels of approval to ensure a high level of quality and an accurate reflection of the client’s vision for the project. However, they were limited in the amount of control clients had over their projects, which ultimately created bottlenecks for Moonlight as well as its customers when it came to fast turnaround. It was soon clear that a better workflow was needed.
Simplifying the approvals process
One of Moonlight’s highest volume clients is a firm that manages communications for various school districts across the United States. “In the education field, reports are sent to parents and guardians showing how often their child has been absent, and then comparing that number to the average for that grade level across the district,” said Zachary Niehaus, Programming Specialist and Data Processor at Moonlight BPO. Formulating these reports for multiple school districts meant swapping out data sets, colors and logos, as well as translating the reports into multiple languages, including Korean, Hmong and Arabic. “The sheer number of variables in each district’s report represented a massive undertaking for our staff,” Niehaus said.
Moonlight already was a long-term user of Transformation’s Uluro platform for its customer communication management (CCM) needs. During a site visit to the Moonlight headquarters, a representative from Transformations noticed that Moonlight was fielding frequent change requests from this high-volume client, and that Moonlight was responsible for approving each of them before the documents could go to print.
“Often, we have clients who may want to add or edit a message, or they may want to change specific fields on their documents. This was particularly true for this client given the number of variables in their communications,” said Ellen Cook, Moonlight’s Vice President. In addition to creating a bottleneck effect in Moonlight’s workflow, the hours spent on approvals resulted in excessive development hours being charged to the client and prevented Moonlight from focusing on higher order project management concerns.
Cultivating more equitable collaboration
The site visit became a turning point for Moonlight when Transformations introduced them to uCampaign, a web-based, client-facing collaboration tool for managing marketing tools and messaging. Eliminating the need for complex programming and clumsy spreadsheets, uCampaign allows outsourced providers to create, manage and approve communications efficiently across multiple digital channels.
Whereas conventional campaign management tools often limit customer control—in turn making the outsourced provider responsible for accumulating, managing, verifying and controlling most elements of a customer’s campaign— Uluro’s uCampaign enables providers to determine the amount of control business users have over their campaign, including approvals, tracking and even determining which updates they want to see. Using a web-based wizard, it’s possible for users to change communications on the fly with relevant messaging, such as new product information, promotional campaigns or regulatory changes on their outbound communications—all without leaving their desks.
Moonlight BPO began using uCampaign within a month of that initial conversation and quickly started to see results. Without numerous hours spent on approvals, Moonlight could focus on building a strong, collaborative relationship with their client. “In addition to saving time on the part of Moonlight’s programming and data processing teams, uCampaign increased our education customer’s satisfaction by giving them freer rein and more ownership over their communications,” said Cook.
Working more efficiently as a result of uCampaign also translated into savings for both businesses. No longer billing for excessive development hours, Moonlight instead rolled the uCampaign subscription fee to its client, resulting in significant savings. uCampaign also allowed for a more equitable balance of risk between the two parties. Whereas their previous approvals process held Moonlight financially responsible for any errors in the content of communications, uCampaign made it possible to pass this liability back to the client along with control over the content.
Sharing the benefits with other clients
“A huge value of uCampaign is that it gives clients the power to truly collaborate on changes,” said Niehaus. With the help of uCampaign, Moonlight BPO was able to share control of the reports, which in turn fostered a more sustainable form of collaboration with its client in the education field.
Now, after the success of this conversation, they are finding opportunities to use the platform to help other customers.
“We’re now branching out and introducing uCampaign to other clients that we know can benefit from its features,” said Ellen Cook. “I would advise every third-party print service provider to take a deep look into uCampaign to get a glimpse into all the opportunities that can be captured with this solution.”
ABOUT TRANSFORMATIONS, INC.
Since 1988, Transformations, Inc has been an innovative developer and provider of business solutions for manufacturing and distribution centers throughout the country. Its software development efforts evolved over the years to include warehouse management systems, inventory control and enterprise resource planning. Transformations’ extensive manufacturing knowledge was used to create Uluro, an all-encompassing solution for service providers and mailers challenged by the complexities of high-volume production and distribution of bills, invoices and other customer communications. Uluro allows for an application to be set up once and then initiated and deployed repeatedly without the need for manual intervention. It is a true front-to-finish suite of solutions all integrated into a single, fully automated document production system allowing service providers to streamline and reduce the costs of complex print and mail processes, enabling recipients to choose how they receive their correspondence, and helping deliver highly personalized mail across physical and electronic media. www.transfrm.com
