CMS and its digital yatra: A tale of two years - The Noel D'Cunha Sunday Column

Five years ago CMS print division was somewhat in a state of flux. Constantly changing leadership; declining volumes; shrinking footprint across BFSI and Telecom sectors; vendor relationships was at low ebb. Even internal employee satisfaction was at its abyss.

Looking back at what has transpired over the last 50 months it is a compelling story that needs to be shared. This is not to brag about how it was done but to caution other small- and mid-sized print businesses and not to fall prey to the clichéd alibi of – print is on a decline due to e-formats and smart devices.

Yes, there is truth in this statement but one has to look at India as a market with eyes wide open before jumping to any conclusions.

Over the past few years there has been a significant push to bring the rural diaspora into the mainstream economy. Take a look at how many new customers have been brought to the fore with all the various programmes launched across banking, insurance, infra, telecom, and utilities sectors, and one will begin realizing the power of Indian demographics in adding opportunity to the print sector, especially the variable data segment.

Ok, so what exactly has transpired at CMS that warrants this coverage?

There are various aspects of the business that can answer this question. But if you me, my response to the above question is wrapped mainly around "employee morale, self-confidence and personal pride!" Businesses are built with people and machines. Period. People are most important followed by machines (technology, processes).

Being a Lean Six Sigma Black apart from my experience of working in print industry across multiple countries, the emphasis since taking charge of CMS in July 2012 were two pronged - inspire people to make them feel good about working with CMS (this was across all three categories - vendors, customers and CMS print division employees) and simultaneously focus on fundamental lean manufacturing principle of "reducing all non-value added time and effort from value stream map of their core product (monthly statements)." Both these aspects are somewhat never ending goals. It is this continuous improvement philosophy that drives the 300+ team members spread across ten print factories across the country.

CMS Print is known for its decentralised digital print model offering the same quality, turnaround time (TAT), and service at same price across entire span of India's geography.

This geographic spread allows CMS's customer to be closer to their customer’s customer, thereby helping reducing logistic cost, effort and time taken to deliver finished product.

Apart from its core business of variable data print products (monthly statements, customer letters, renewal notices for telecom, utilities and BFSI sectors), CMS has also made a strong foray into education and training sectors. The primary model for these sectors is "print-on-demand" where CMS can deliver books printed digitally and in quantities ranging from 10-500 within 72 hours, across any of the 10 cities that it has print shops in. This has attracted many national level training institutes as well as international publishing companies to engage with CMS and take advantage of their geographic reach.

There has been a steady stream of investment into the core production capabilities of the business as well as infrastructure of each print site.

In the past few years the business has added 35+ digital production class printers, IT and software capabilities especially around data preparation of print ready files, ISO certifications for all locations, and automatic insertion capability at select locations and more importantly a strong fortified bond with their raw material partners (I don’t like calling them vendors) and most importantly, all customers.

Employee engagement is at an all-time high with each location being treated as an individual profit centre thereby resulting in not only developing its local leadership to understand "how to run a business" but by giving them a greater say in main stream business. We have skilfully developed a strong second layer leadership team across the business.

In a recently concluded annual business offsite where the top 30 of our business congregated for some learning and fun, the main emphasis was on "hands-on engagement”. Every activity planned at the offsite stemmed from the underlying principle of "success will not walk to you; one has to be hands-on, engaged at all levels of business; only then will results be positive."

CMS Print Team at recently concluded conclave combining learning, recognition and fun

Couple of years ago we conducted aa similar workshop that focussed around "effective communication skills”, not just verbal skills but across elements such as good body language, confident voice, speech techniques, situation or role plays. It is this emphasis on employees that is now beginning to bear fruit across their business.

In recent times, CMS Print division was selected for a long-term print contract with India's largest telecom giant to service their monthly statements across four regions. With this new contract CMS Print is now the only variable data printer to service the top four telecom providers of India at same time.

For readers who may not know, telecom sector’s variable data volume is perhaps the trickiest to handle due to their multiple print cycles in each month. And more importantly all telecom providers typically having the same cycle dates. From a printer's perspective this presents a complex conundrum in terms of print capacity during peak data cycles vis-a-vis percentage of asset utilisation.

This fundamental challenge is precisely why we pushed our team hard to develop new business lines outside the scope of monthly statements.

Today the business is pillared on two product lines - VDP (monthly statements) and non-VDP (all print jobs apart from monthly statements).

In recent years the non-VDP model has won hearts at several different government offices across the country.

In 2013, CMS Print executed a massive booklet printing job for BMC, Mumbai. The job entailed printing, packing and dispatch of booklets across 225+ schools. The entire job was completed on-time, error-free and as per the quality specs prescribed in the tender.

Another big job carried out was for the State Government of Kerala – printing customer records for all ration card holders. We also printed electoral voter list for Maharashtra, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh and West Bengal.

A recently concluded order for Maharashtra SSC Board involved printing of 16+ lakh certificates (in colour) and getting them dispatched to 440+ schools across state within 10 days. This order too, much to the pleasant surprise of our clients and industry friends, was completed and delivered on-time and as per the quality prescribed by Ministry of Education officials.

Businesses go through ups and downs. It is a principle of life. No point sitting in denial or worrying about it. However, it is what you do when things are low that defines the strength of its longevity. The efforts over past 50 months that have gone into turning this business around with hands-on participation from each and every employee has really transpired into an environment that is bubbling with positivity along with an internal culture of respect and satisfaction.

I keep reminding our team as well as all support functions that reaching the top is simpler than staying there. We have only arrived at the zenith. Now our work gets much harder as competition is bound to play the ‘catch-up’ game. Stay focussed. Stay humble.