Wolverine Solutions Group (WSG) is a full service document management company providing solutions ranging from the front end “Document Creation” to the back end “Document Distribution”. They have grown to provide a complete array of document management services to a large customer base. Services include digital printing, statement prossessing, automated mail with postal discounts, database management, transpromo, direct mail communications, web-based fulfillment, and other industry leading solutions optimized for hard copy and electronic document distribution.

WSG has consistently sustained a growth rate of 8% per year, expanding to include two Detroit-based facilities totaling over 300,000-square-feet of production area. With a large investment in state-of-the-art equipment, they are well-equipped to handle very large print, mail and fulfillment projects, along with having the flexibility to handle rush projects as they arise. WSG’s customer base consists of a variety of local and national organizations within the automotive, manufacturing, retail, advertising, health care and financial industries.

Over the years, WSG has invested in people, equipment and facilities to provide full service end-to-end document solutions. They are committed to their customers to be technologically advanced, responsive and flexible in the demanding document management environment. Solimar Systems interviewed Darryl English, Vice President at WSG to discuss how implementing Solimar technology has increased productivity, customer satisfaction and revenues.

The Challenge

As a continuing internal business improvement process, Wolverine performs regular assessments of their production workflows. They evaluate and explore various ways to improve their overall productivity wherever possible. After a thorough examination of their document related business operations, they uncovered workflow bottlenecks that they felt could be eliminated.

The specific “challenges” WSG discovered as areas for improvements were:

Once the challenge areas were identified, WSG began the process to address them. They determined that if the workflow automation issues were resolved, the remaining challenges would also be resolved. “The lack of automation was triggering negative results in several areas,” said English. “We felt that if we implemented the right automation technology in the right place all of our other workflow challenges would eventually disappear.”

The Solution

As a long time user of Solimar’s Print/Director™ solution suite, WSG was aware of Solimar’s reputation and expertise as an output management software solution provider. “We did not consider other software vendors to help us find the right document re-engineering solution,” said English. “Because we had a long-standing existing business relationship with Solimar, we felt very comfortable engaging Solimar for help and eventually having them direct us to the right solution to meet our needs.”

It was determined that Solimar’s Rubika® solution would provide the needed workflow automation capabilities that WSG needed. Using the various document re-engineering modules of Rubika, WSG was able to drastically reduce the set up and development time required for client projects. Instead of developing complicated scripts and custom programming, Rubika’s graphical user interface allowed WSG’s application developers to rapidly prepare client projects prior to printing. “Rubika has eliminated the need for our development staff to manually create ‘one-off’ custom code,” added English. “Not only can we now develop applications in an automated fashion, but we can also develop them faster and at a lower cost. Our document re-engineering workflows are much more productive now.”

“After some Rubika set up time, we were able to automate the entire process of merging files, generating customer banners, and applying OMR marks to variable page documents,” explained English. “The system is easy to use, plus it enables us to leverage lower level skilled personnel to work with it.” Rubika has also enabled WSG to increase new revenue opportunities by allowing them to accept client PDF print streams and re-engineer them prior to printing. “Before we had Rubika, we couldn’t accommodate clients with PDF print streams,” said English. “The capability Rubika has given us opens up a brand new market segment with numerous new revenue opportunities.”

The Results

Adding the Rubika product to their production workflow has proved to be a very good business decision for WSG. By eliminating the need to develop custom programming for client projects, WSG has significantly decreased their development expenses. “Rubika allows us to save at least $50,000 a year in application development costs,” explains English. “Because of Rubika’s intuitive user interface and built-in automation capabilities, re-purposing applications can now be accomplished more efficiently.”

The Rubika automation benefits have made WSG’s workflow more productive. Client projects are being completed in a shorter period of time and with less development resources. “Our Solimar solution reduces our client project turnaround time by an average of 21 days,” said English.

WSG recognizes and appreciates the outstanding support they receive from Solimar’s award-winning technical support staff. “The Solimar technical support staff has always been there for us,” added English. “With Solimar’s help, we were able to successfully integrate Rubika into our existing production workflow, complete the first project on time, and as a result we created a new client. Solimar possesses great teamwork and delivers the expertise, knowledge, and execution when we need it.”