Vinod Kripalani usually doesn't mention business forms, direct mail, electronic forms, e-commerce or any of his firm's other products or services when calling on prospective customers. "We're not product or service-driven," says Kripalani, president of InFlowTech Inc., a 17-year-old distributorship in San Francisco. "We're client-driven."
It's more common to hear Kripalani question prospects about their management issues, including how firms manage their workflows, print budgets, data issues and more. "Clients don't care whether I do print-on-demand, checks or envelopes," he says. "All they care about is what I can do for them."
Questioning prospects also helps Kripalani
determine whether they'll be good business matches for InFlowTech. "We try to
target the kind of client that will value our services, appreciate the benefits
that are derived from those services and be interested in developing a
relationship with us," he says.
A Valuable Tool Bag
InFlowTech provides a full spectrum of products and services, including business forms, security documents, envelopes, direct mail, electronic forms, bar coded products, variable imaging, commercial printing and software solutions. The firm also offers e-commerce services, warehousing, distribution services, forms design, print-on-demand, inventory control services, management reporting and fraud-prevention services.
"I think of all of the different products and services we offer as tools in our tool bag," Kripalani says. "We pull out different tools and use them differently for each individual client."
InFlowTech determines which tools will best meet clients' needs by learning about their businesses. "You have to know their businesses as well as they do, and then apply all of the procedures, protocols and knowledge that you have," Kripalani says. "We tell clients, 'If you want a printer, throw a rock. You'll hit 5,000 of them. But how do you know they're going to be in your best interest? How do you know they're going to save you money?'"
The Human Side of Business
"Let's face it, at the end of the day our products are the most boring products on the face of the earth," Kripalani says. "It's corporate toilet paper. You have do something to make it fun."
On sales calls, Kripalani uses his digital camera to take photos of contacts at each client location. Photos are stored on InFlowTech's intranet so its employees can become familiar with each contact. "Business has to be humanized," Kripalani says. InFlowTech's customers love the extra attention, he says.
A person answers InFlowTech's phone during normal business hours, unlike some firms that rely on computerized systems. InFlowTech also programs customers' phone numbers into its phone system. When clients call the distributorship, employees often know who's calling before they answer.
But InFlowTech doesn't lose sight of the serious side of business. "One of our standing rules is that if a client ever complains about one of us, that pretty much means automatic [employee] termination," Kripalani says. "That's pretty drastic, but nobody ever has complained."
Helping a Client Reduce Costs
When an existing client began experiencing problems with its checks, InFlowTech approached the firm with a solution. The client, a medical insurance company, frequently ordered 10 different checks, including payroll and accounts payable checks, and two direct-deposit advices. The insurance company encountered problems with check obsolescence because of frequent bank, MICR and systems changes. What's more, the client was located far from the distributorship, so deliveries were expensive and sometimes took as long as four weeks.
InFlowTech provided the insurance firm with laser printer-based check-generation software that allows the client to create and print checks and direct-deposit advices in house. The distributorship now provides the insurance company with only one type of check stock. The software gives the insurance company flexibility in changing banking information, allows it to generate checks in half the time because they're printed and signed at the same time, allows it to customize checks with logos and other devices, and reduces its check-generation costs by 40-45 percent, Kripalani says.
—Kara S. Carpenter
