About Omnipress.
“Omnipress is a family-owned printer offering everything from programme and abstract books to manuals and training materials. We provide fulfilment services as well. We primarily work with associations across education, government, science and corporate sectors, mainly operating in the U.S., but we also ship training materials overseas.
I’m the Systems Manager. I started as a self-taught Salesforce admin and graphic designer, and have since moved into more of a business analyst role. I’m responsible for many of our integrations, making sure our systems work for our staff and that data flows where it needs to go.”
All for customer service.
What sets Omnipress apart from other printing companies? “Most printing companies these days offer no-touch, fast and cheap service. You send them your file, they print it, maybe you get a proof, and that’s it. We’re a heavy-touch service – we want to be there every step of the way. We may not be the cheapest in our field, but we excel at customer service because that’s what sets us apart. We’ve discovered that people really want a personalised experience.”
Customers want answers faster.
“Traditionally, we had a very long sales process. We’d contact leads, get an idea of what kind of project they were producing, put together proposals and have discussions before eventually trying to win the opportunity. But now, we’re advertising online and people are finding us through Google. They’re not looking for a long sales process – they want to see some numbers first and then decide whether they want to talk to us. We wanted a solution that would allow us to provide multiple options very quickly.
Customers are not looking for a long sales process – they want to see some numbers first and then decide whether they want to talk to us.Nathan Clarke Systems Manager, Omnipress
Up until recently, we had been using Salesforce CPQ. But with the licence coming to an end, we wanted to find a new vendor as quickly as possible and make sure that we had something that better fit our needs. We wanted to get all our products and contracts aligned in one proposal system rather than in multiple places.”
Looking for something to handle the complexity.
“The key requirements were flexibility and the ability to handle our wide range of products. We have book products, digital products and sometimes do full graphic design and formatting for entire books. For event customers, we need to get the books there on time. For fulfilment customers, we help manage their storefront and inventory. Some contracts are year-to-year, while others are event-based. We needed a system that was flexible enough to handle all these different products and capable of managing the pricing logic behind them.”
From twelve options to Hive.
“I searched online for something that would fit what we needed and had some sort of Salesforce connector. I started with about a dozen, which eventually narrowed down to about four custom demos. Hive was the only one that really stuck the landing and did the work. There’s nothing more disappointing than giving someone all this information for a custom demo and then realising they didn’t read anything. Hive really tried to understand our needs. The amount of work that went into the demo was impressive. It showed that not only was the product something we could work with, but that Hive was a company we would want to work with as well.”
The Hive demo showed us that not only the CPQ was something we could work with, but that Hive was a company we would want to work with as well.Nathan Clarke Systems Manager, Omnipress
Keeping the personal touch.
“Right now, we’re using Hive internally. We get basic specifications from our prospects through our online forms, and follow up via email. We then use Hive to create a quick general proposal. After some back-and-forth with the customer, we generate the final quote in Hive and send it to them. We see the potential to have customers submit their specifications directly through Hive, but we want to maintain that personal contact rather than have an automated system generate pricing that someone could simply take to a competitor.”
Time saving is the biggest benefit.
The response so far? “The sales team really likes what they’ve seen so far. With any of these things, though, it’s a day-to-day process of figuring out how it works and how it feels. The biggest benefit will be saving a lot of time. Hive will also allow us to standardise a lot of our contracts. That’s a big push for us, as it will streamline our process.”
Easy to use.
“One of the most useful Hive features for the sales teams is the user interface. With Salesforce CPQ, you’re going through spreadsheets. With Hive, you can customise fields and have things pop up depending on other inputs. I don’t think I actually saw that in any other software that used a web-form structure.
Beyond the sales interface, being able to see under the hood is also very valuable. This allows us to make changes ourselves, whether we're updating prices or adding new products, without having to go back to Hive for every change. Initially I had the Hive team build one of the product configurators, and I’ve built the rest. It’s nice that I’ve been able to jump in and build things myself.”
With Hive, you can see how things are working, which helps us take care of a lot of things ourselves.Nathan Clarke Systems Manager, Omnipress
Reliability and flexibility.
“It was also important to us that the system wasn’t set in stone. That’s been one of the problems with Salesforce – they can suddenly decide to remove or add certain features. With Hive, we know it’s software that’s actively being developed and that will work with us when changes are needed.
Reliability is also important. Salesforce CPQ would often crash on larger quotes. Some customers easily have two dozen products, and each book is fully customisable. Software without those storage and processing limits gives us room for much more customisation.
Integration with Salesforce CRM.
By connecting Hive CPQ with Salesforce CRM, Omnipress aims to start the sales process earlier and get pricing information to potential customers faster. “Because potential customers expect a quick reply, we want to start the quoting process at the lead level. Hive will also feed final quotes into Omnipress’s in-house ticketing and accounting systems, so production and billing start from the same figures sales agreed by the customer.”
Customisable sales process.
“I’m especially happy with the ability to customise the sales process and have it in steps. For our books, for example, those steps can be the book itself, how the materials are coming in, how things are getting printed, the cover, inside pages, finishing, binding and so on. It allows us to follow the sales process much more clearly. I’ve also built shipping logic where the available choices change based on what you select – from UPS and the U.S. Postal Service to freight and drop shipping.”
Looking ahead.
What does Omnipress hope to achieve with Hive in the future? “We want to add additional products to the configurator, and a big part of that is trying to get institutional knowledge into Hive. If all specifications, pricing and other requirements for those products are in Hive, we don't have to go to our production manager every time we need a quote.
We're not there yet, but once we are, we'll be able to build additional products into the configurator. Being able to test more things with Hive will also give us more time to understand our customers and their needs.”
