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Square One Inc. 

Shop Floor Data Collection Tracks Specific Costs and Profitability

By moving to a unified Print MIS, Square One gained the ability to track shop floor data in detail, identify the most profitable work, and support smarter business decisions.

Square One - Case Study (5)
quoteBG

“Our intention has always been to use a system to increase our production volume without adding any more staff, which allows us to grow and be more profitable.”

Jill Townsend,
Partner, Square One Direct Inc.

About the company

Square One - Case Study (1)

Square One Direct Inc. is a WBE-certified marketing services provider headquartered in Mount Laurel, New Jersey. Since its founding in 2013, the company has specialized in data-driven direct mail, personalized print, and multi-channel marketing campaigns.

Square One helps organizations manage every stage of their marketing programs — from strategy and creative execution to production, logistics, and fulfillment. Its certification as a Women’s Business Enterprise reflects a commitment to diversity, while its expertise in combining data with direct communication channels positions it as a trusted partner for clients seeking measurable marketing outcomes.

The challenge

Square One Direct relied on manual processes, a basic MIS, and Excel spreadsheets to track costs and performance.

While this worked early on, as the company grew the approach became inadequate — creating data silos that made it difficult to clearly identify which work was most profitable.

Key Requirements
cloud-binary Icon - eProductivity Software Centralize data from multiple sources into a single system of record.
binoculars Icon - eProductivity Software Gain full visibility into every job and process across the business.
chart-line-up Icon - eProductivity Software Track and measure production costs accurately to improve profitability.

Carefully Tracking Specific Costs, Revenue and Profitability

For years, staff-driven procedures and a basic MIS in conjunction with homegrown constructed Excel spreadsheets worked well. At least it worked well enough for managers to understand and track profitability. About five years ago, the Square One reached $8 million in sales and executives noticed that costs were increasing more rapidly than revenues. Profitability was declining, and they were unsure why.

Square One staff spent considerable time using the old system to document costs for various processes, which was both challenging for the shop floor staff to collect and difficult for management to utilize. Investigative processes and tools showed them where to focus, but they were not specific enough to identify solutions for improvement. Managers discovered that:

  • Cost visibility: Couldn’t identify job-level cost factors or link cost to price

  • Profitability: Couldn’t distinguish profitable from unprofitable projects

  • Consistency: No accountability, project plans were just numbers on paper

  • Efficiency: Every project re-costed manually as a clean-sheet design

  • Accuracy: Frequent errors in manufacturing and purchasing from manual processes

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The Solution

ePS Avanti integrates estimating, purchasing and scheduling, accounting, shop floor data collection, payroll, shipping, CRM invoicing and billing more effectively than Square One's current system.

Townsend has some good advice for anyone considering investing in Print MIS systems:

Never forget that this is just software. MIS systems rely on detailed information about your operation to work. Be sure to gather all the data you need before beginning your implementation.

Be willing to change. You will struggle and miss out on benefits if you try to automate the way you've always done things. Work with the system and not against it.

Communicate to your staff how this new system has the tools they need to do their jobs more efficiently. Be clear that a better solution does not indicate poor past performance. Your team did not have the data to make informed decisions before and this will help them perform better.

  • Ensuring Consistent Accountability

    Delivers closed-loop accountability on a more reliable and consistent basis.

  • Managing Diverse Cost Centers

    Handles diverse operations — including flexography — each with its own models and workflows.

  • Streamlining Management Tasks

    Eliminates redundant management tasks and simplifies day-to-day oversight.

  • Providing Faster, More Accurate Data Capture

    Makes data entry quicker and less cumbersome while ensuring more information is captured accurately.

The Results

Square One realized a return on its investment within six months:

  • Captured data is now complete, detailed and accurate.
  • Errors arising from miscommunications have been reduced.
  • Informed business decisions can be made based on the profitability of any project.
  • Producing fast, accurate, and consistent estimates has generated higher sales. The same staff supports more capacity.

Most importantly, Square One has seen an overall 10% increase in total sales with increased profitability. Some of this growth includes anticipated work from a major client but their newfound ability to quickly and accurately estimate projects also had a big impact. Just as important, profitability, which had been lagging revenue growth, increased as well.

Jill Townsend, Partner at Square One, described an example where a $45,000 print-and-mail project run using data gleaned from Avanti was $4,000 cheaper to produce than by using the shop's traditional methods. She stressed that this is just one example of many projects. 

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“As challenging as it was with all we took on, we saw profit and sales growth. That would not have been the case if we had continued with our old system - we would have been in decline.”

Jill Townsend,
Partner, Square One Direct Inc.

Square One - Case Study (4)