Long-term service partnership continually yields
positive results for high-volume mailing operation
BÖWE BELL + HOWELL service staff proactively collaborates with Farmers
Insurance to meet mail drop dates and savings goals
At a staff celebration in March 2006, employees at the mail
processing center of Los Angeles-based Farmers Insurance
Group® received word that they met 100 percent of their service
level agreements for two straight years. That means they met
all service delivery dates and quality goals set by their internal
customers.
Farmers Insurance commemorated the occasion with special employee golf shirts provided by BÖWE BELL + HOWELL bearing
the logos of both organizations. Such recognition from a vendor
on a commemorative employee gift is testament to the service
history and special partnership enjoyed by Farmers Insurance and
BÖWE BELL + HOWELL.
“As long as we’ve had inserters, we’ve had their machines,” said
Output Processing Manager Herb LaMonda. “Their service team
provides maintenance and machine availability to help us get
the job done. We’ve met our service goals while reducing costs,
and we’ve accomplished this in partnership with BÖWE BELL +
checks and policy cancellations, which both receive very high
priority. In all, we process about 300 to 400 jobs a day.”
LaMonda’s staff of 64 prides itself on going the extra mile to finish the job on time, from the occasional overtime and weekend
work to equipment modifications and out-of-the-box thinking.
Long partnership produces “hard dollar” savings
According to BÖWE BELL + HOWELL District Service Manager
John Czach, BBH has been with Farmers every step of the way
from the days of manual insertion through a recent installation
of job-level tracking software. “Our staff of eight on-site service
representatives support 15 different BBH systems,” said Czach.
“We’re always looking for ways to help Farmers improve their
HOWELL.”
operations.”
One of the largest mailers in Southern California
LaMonda applauds BÖWE BELL + HOWELL’s proactive approach
Tracing its origins to 1928, the Farmers Insurance Group of Com-
creative solutions and modifications,” he claimed. “Over the past
panies is one of the largest writers of private passenger automobile and homeowners insurance. These companies also provide
business, life insurance, recreational products and financial
services to more than 15 million customers in 41 states.
At their mail processing center in Los Angeles, employees work
around the clock five days a week to process approximately
400,000 mailpieces per day. With about 95 percent of their mail
sent First Class, LaMonda estimates that Farmers is responsible
for slightly less than three percent of all First Class mail leaving
Los Angeles.
“We are the only billing and processing center for all of Farmers’
various businesses nationwide,” said LaMonda. “We process all
policies, monthly billing and new business. We also handle claims
to problem solving. “They’ve worked with us to come up with
two to three years, we’ve done a good job reducing costs to our
customers, and we’ve done this in partnership with BBH.”
As part of being a long-term maintenance customer, BÖWE BELL
+ HOWELL also offered Farmers new technologies for evaluation. For example, they provided the company with new products
developed to increase system efficiencies, allowing Farmers to
validate their value prior to purchase. BBH also provided two consultants to do a complete analysis of Farmers’ mailing operations
and provide a detailed report complete with non-vendor-specific
recommendations that included third-party solutions.
LaMonda stated, “When you talk about vendor partnerships,
some of the benefits realized are ‘soft’ savings. BBH has helped
us realize ‘hard’ dollar savings.”
Several years ago, Farmers had little success in attempts to save
money by switching from 20-pound paper to 18-pound stock.
Faced with ever-increasing postage costs, LaMonda decided to
take another look at 18-pound paper. BÖWE BELL + HOWELL
service staff provided suggestions and made the necessary
equipment modifications to accommodate the lighter paper. After
initial testing and fine-tuning, Farmers is now processing the 18pound paper at the same speed as the heavier stock. The switch
in paper stock has yielded savings of $1.3 million so far this year.
Innovation and professionalism
Czach claims Farmers is very progressive in their approach to
cutting fixed costs. “We helped them streamline the size of their
standard forms from about seven or eight sizes to just two, while
still retaining the look and feel of the originals.”
Buoyed by recent successes, LaMonda wants to continue exploring opportunities to become even more efficient. “BÖWE BELL
+ HOWELL has been a proactive partner in innovation, always
looking at things in new ways and providing creative solutions,”
added LaMonda.
“Our service team is extremely experienced and versatile,” added
Czach. “When one of our senior engineers at Farmers left, we
were able to keep up the level of expertise and service with no
drop off by replacing him with an equally knowledgeable professional. In fact, with this new person on site providing new
perspectives, we’re even achieving more now.”
BÖWE BELL + HOWELL offers preventive maintenance agreement (PMA) services at a variety of levels to suit customer needs,
including traditional on-site resident service programs, on-call service, or specially tailored agreements for customers who maintain
their own equipment to BÖWE BELL + HOWELL standards. Field
Services is backed by a staff of more than 1,100 professionals
uniquely qualified to provide service to mailroom and office equipment throughout North America, and a state-of-the-art Customer
Care Center that supports all service calls and part orders 24
hours a day, seven days a week. Service staff are also available to
provide installation support and customer training.
For more information on BÖWE BELL + HOWELL Field
Services, call 1-800-838-0436 and select option 1.
© 2006 Böwe Bell + Howell Company. All rights reserved.
BÖWE BELL + HOWELL and the Böwe Bell + Howell Company logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of BBH,
Inc. All other trademarks and service marks are the property
of their respective owners. Specifications are subject to
change without notice.
P.O. Box 14986
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-4986
For more information on BÖWE BELL + HOWELL, please call 800-220-3030, email
us at marketing@bowebellhowell.com or visit our Web site at
www.bowebellhowell.com
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