Integrated Printing Solutions Credits Accelerated Networks for Swift and Successful Growth

Situation
At some point all ambitious small and medium sized businesses with advancement aspirations are faced with the challenge of managing growth. But sometimes companies run into this situation even sooner than anticipated. Those with limited resources often find that working with a technology partner is the best way to immediately address increased demand and to realize their true potential. Integrated Printing Solutions (IPS), a leading high-speed imaging, printing and card service bureau, found itself in a similar situation and wanted to take its business to the next level.

IPS was a small but well established printing broker offering corporate printing and mailing, plastic card fulfillment and recovery services to medium sized health insurance providers, credit card companies and banks. Several years ago, IPS became aware of much larger opportunities with top retail and financial institutions. However, in order to compete, IPS was faced with the significant challenge of how to immediately scale its business enough to service the high volume needs of big corporations. IPS owned a large production facility and the expertise to deliver quality printed products, however without a large in-house IT team, IPS needed a fast and effective way to obtain the technical back-end functionality that would allow the company to win the big contracts. IPS required a new system that could securely and seamlessly automate a very high volume of disparate and sensitive data needed from large customers.

Solution
Accelerated Networks partnered with IPS in 2001 for immediate IT support as well as long term technology development that would help the company build the necessary tools to expand its business. Accelerated Networks provided IT resources for day-to-day support and created a strategic plan for growth that included secure business automation designed to enable fast execution of large orders. Drawing from various sources, Accelerated Network Solutions created a custom designed middleware solution utilizing off-the-shelf, open source software and tools. The resulting system allowed for seamless integration with all IPS’ key vendors and customers, enabling a dramatic increase in productivity. Accelerated Networks also addressed the security requirements of large customers by configuring network parameters to ensure the protection of sensitive data and to comply with the requirements set by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999.

Business Value
Accelerated Networks transformed IPS’ IT department from a support group to a revenue generating organization. As a direct result of Accelerated Networks’ business automation solution, IPS significantly increased its turnaround time for a demo mock-up. Before implementation of its new system, IPS needed weeks to deliver a major mock up. Now it could produce samples in less than 48 hours. As a result, IPS qualified for and won several major new contracts and increased its annual revenue more than 1200 percent in the past five years, from $2M to over $25M today.

Accelerated Networks has grown along side IPS since the business relationship began in 2001. Today, Accelerated Networks continues to support IPS with fully outsourced IT services that provide a wide range of support functions from programming to professional services and help desk support.