Increase Profit Margins With Complete ID Solutions
This VAR expects sales revenue to grow in 2008 by providing complete ID solutions to the event services and hospitality industries.
Providing the full gamut of ID solutions seems like a daunting challenge to most VARs. Building the wide range of supplier relationships to provide an array of solutions takes time and effort. Is your time and effort worth the potential of a future return? Can you count on reaping what you've sowed? For Plasco ID, providing an entire ID solution is working — and working well. In fact, its projected growth in recent years is evidence enough that the approach works.
In its 25-year history, Plasco ID maintained ties with markets that it would have otherwise overlooked, resulting in sales growth year over year. "Our growth is fueled by the relationships we maintain, in addition to our salespeople, technicians, and the strong overall demand for ID equipment," explains Chris Dreyfuss, sales manager at Plasco ID. "In the last five years, we have been growing at a faster pace than ever before."
A recent convention for a major rental car company required nearly 9,000 ID cards to be printed with the company's corporate logo and each attendee's full name and photograph, as well as encoding for their respective hotel rooms. CONVENTION PLUS, a division of HES Convention Group, was contracted by the rental car company to produce the ID cards in a short period of time — two days. Previously, HES used the standard cut, paste, and laminate approach to ID card production. However, this manual method was not only insecure, it was labor-intensive and costly on a per-card basis. Given the volume of cards for this event and time frame, HES sought a digital solution to provide maximum efficiency.
Provide Competitively Priced Equipment, Improve Security
HES turned to Plasco ID, confident that they could provide the correct solution (i.e. ID equipment, software, cameras, and consumables) for their needs. "We provided HES with plastic card personalization for the last four years," notes Dreyfuss. The solution purchased consisted of 11 Evolis ID card printers, Asure ID Express identification software, Canon cameras, and the necessary consumables (i.e. printer ribbons and ink) for each ID station. "Event service companies turn to us for a multitude of reasons," explains Dreyfuss. "Plasco ID represents a variety of suppliers in our industry and is able to effectively assess a customer's needs and provide the most appropriate solution."
On average, the system installed at HES can output cards at the rate of 60 to 100 per hour. In this case, 11 ID stations were installed for the customer, resulting in an hourly output of between 660 and 1,100 cards. "The customer was required to produce additional cards for the car rental company during the registration period. During that 4-hour period, the ID systems produced over 4,000 cards to accommodate the additional guests at the convention center," says Dreyfuss. Additionally, security was heightened for the guests at the convention. "Security is improved with digital systems. Simply put, not everyone has the necessary digital equipment to fraudulently duplicate a card. Features such as the hologram reduce the risk of fraud," explains Dreyfuss.
Plasco ID finished the installation within two days and provides ongoing support for the installation. The value provided is evident in the cost savings realized by the end user. "Typically, the labor costs associated with card making [i.e. cut, paste, and laminate] is high in a manual environment. Manually creating an ID card is two to three times the cost of producing it digitally. The digital solution implemented for HES not only helped them produce such a high volume of cards in a short period of time, but also saved the customer nearly 30% per card," notes Dreyfuss. "The system paid for itself the day of the convention. The customer earned a return on its investment [$30,000] from the high volume of cards produced and the money saved on each."