The Wave Newsletter - Edition 9 - April 2023

Dennis P. LeStrange President & CEO, BlueCrest

Dear Team,

During our February All-Employee Meeting, I shared our Q4 results and 2023 key initiatives with you. For those of you who couldn’t attend, a recording is available on the BlueCrest Net.

In our 2022 overview, we touched on our strong Q4 performance and the resiliency of our team. Despite unprecedented purchase price variance, and the immense task of our Less is More initiative, we saw what it really means to play as a team. Put simply, when we play as a team, we win. Every time.

In this edition of The Wave, we have a section dedicated to our first annual ICARE Standing Ovation Awards! Again, congratulations to these team members who exemplified everything it means to live out our key behaviors and play as part of the BlueCrest team.

Last month, we held our BlueCrest Kickoff and our Service Kickoff. On page 4 you’ll find photos, videos, and recaps from those events. Additionally, Chief Marketing Officer Carl Amacker has written a thought leadership piece that digs deeper into our Data Through Delivery message and what that means for BlueCrest moving forward. Please take the time to read it to gain a better understanding how we want to present BlueCrest to the world—we’ve changed a lot in the last few years!

Lastly, please check out the recaps from our National Postal Forum and Hunkeler InnovationDays trade show events, our upcoming Ask the Experts, and our recent mentions in the news. There’s a lot of excitement across the company right now.

Remember: when we play as a team, we win.

Onward,

Dennis P. LeStrange, President & CEO, BlueCrest

Customer Events

ProMat

March 20-23, 2023, Chicago

ProMat is the largest international material handling, logistics and supply chain show and conference. www.promatshow.com

InkJet Summit

April 24-26 2023, Austin, TX

Inkjet Summit offers strategic insight into current and future production inkjet printing technology, software and solutions. www.ijsummit.com

National Postal Forum

May 21-24 2023, Charlotte, NC

NPF is the premier mailing and shipping conference that works directly with the United States Postal Service (USPS) to provide the most comprehensive educational and networking platform available. www.npf.org

Internal Events

Ask

BlueCrest Kickoff

BlueCrest Kickoff Photo Montage

In January 2023, a cross-functional group of BlueCrest team members met in Fort Worth, Texas to kickoff the year with two days of strategy meetings, presentations, client case studies, and fun. Plenty of BBQ was also involved. Check out the video below for highlights of BlueCrest team members in action out in the wild, wild west!

BlueCrest Service Kickoff

by Genta Itoh

The cross-functional leadership team of the North American Service organization convened in the Danbury HQ for a Service Kickoff meeting in early March for the first time since becoming BlueCrest. Over the course of four days, the group conducted workshops, training, and knowledge-building activities to align on future priorities, drive transformation initiatives, and share best practices across teams.

There were several key themes of focus during the event: driving increased Service customer value, increasing operational effectiveness through consistent processes and standards, and improving organizational leadership and coordination. The Kickoff event will serve as a starting point for multiple on-going activities within the Service organization to improve workforce development, core service delivery practices, and enhanced tools and information to support jobs to be done.

The event also marked the retirement and transition of the US Service leadership for Russ Morrill and Jon Gauthier. Russ left Pitney/BlueCrest with 40 years of service and Jon will be retiring with 43 years of service. Genta Itoh has transitioned to VP, East US and Jeff Dalmann, VP West will continue to cover the West.

Above: Russ and Laura Morrill

Oman TrueSort Advanced Success

by David Jefferies

Managing the demands of e-commerce and accompanying parcel sortation requires leading-edge technology and data driven intelligence. Partnering with our local channel Partner Emerdis, Asyad Express are set to bring new capabilities to their rapidly expanding e-commerce service operations in Oman.

Located at Asyad Express Fulfilment Centre in Muscat, OMAN; the new high-speed parcel sorting system is built on a combination of sophisticated OCR reading and our industry leading SortEngine 360 software, which connects sorting operations across sites and across machines for consolidated data management, control and insight.

Together with our TrueSort hardware, the result is exceptionally advanced end-to-end parcel management with full traceability, live data reporting and happy customers throughout the supply chain. Now, Asyad Express can accelerate despatch of current volumes and have created additional capacity for expected future growth.

This is a great win for a global team from BlueCrest. There were many sacrifices along the way to achieve this installation, with the team working weekends, thanksgiving and all the way up to Christmas. Congratulations and thank you.

Below:

The Service team gathered for a kickoff meeting and a retirement celebration for Russ Morrill and Jon Gauthier.

Keith Miller, Bartosz Latuszek (Eryk install contractor), Szymon Rodowanski (Eryk install contractor), Radosław Baszak (Eryk install contractor), David Chastain, Tri Nuygen (Danbury), Allen Simers (Danbury).

Above: Pictured left to right:

Craig Alonzo

There were many people involved in the Fluence integration project, especially in relation to Windchill/D365 conversion, but Craig really stood out. For a professional engineer to take the time and effort to work, train, educate, enter data, check parts, etc. so that we could continue to make progress in the integration was astounding. Thank you, Craig!

Carol Benitez

Carol is responsible for supporting our national sales force on pricing out every deal. Carol does her job enthusiastically with no time boundaries. She supports both the west coast and east coast as well as every product we present to our clients. She does so all while managing closely to the company's expected margins. Thank you Carol for all you do for our team!

Dale Burkett

Dale provided incredible support for on-site client RENKIM. The client raved about Dale's ability to research problems and provide resolutions to meet production demands. He did so with enthusiasm all while collaborating across the organization. Well done, Dale!

Philip Roura

Vote by Mail Client City of Philadelphia encountered an issue with their Accelejet printer at the start-up of their latest campaign. The outage was more complicated than first diagnosed resulting in an extended outage and a stressful and tense situation with the client. Phil Roura delivered Professional Services production support for each campaign and on this occasion had to operate above and beyond the normal requirements to calm a very difficult situation. Thank you, Phil!

Patricia Kustom

In support of a plan to increase client awareness and interest in the EvoluJet Printing System, Patty Kustom developed an innovative, multistep Direct Mail and Email Marketing Campaign to over 500 prospective clients. As an innovator, this is the first BlueCrest direct mail and messaging campaign that used BlueCrest SW products to enable the story of how a Client can track the materials through the Postal Service. Thank you, Patty!

Danny Morales

Danny has a commitment to excellence. Being a service supervisor in the S. FL market, he had some staffing issues which left him short handed. Danny never complained. He figured out how to respond to every service request with a smile. He used resources from other territories and he also worked tirelessly to deliver a quality service product to all of the customers within the market. Thank you Danny!

Anya Reed

Since joining Bluecrest Anya has jumped in and adapted well to the fast-paced environment and became a much needed asset to the sorter team. Anya has already made excellent progress streamlining processes that will make the sorter products move much more efficiently from start to finish. High-five, Anya!

Marcin Zufla

Marcin is supporting our Intl. Mgt team tremendously in all financial reporting topics. His individual dedication, support, knowledge and passion is extremely valuable for our BlueCrest organization. In particular he always has an answer to any question, works hours and hours for setting up reports and supports us with his analysis done on a short notice. Thank you very much, Marcin.

Congratulations to our ICARE Applause Winners from Q4 2022! They were drawn from the ICARE High-Five winners. Who will be next?

Did you know you can now recognize teams?

Sean Hogg

Sean is without question the unsung hero of the sorter word, spending countless hours including nights and weekends to provide our clients with the best service possible. Sean even stayed on site many times to be sure a client was satisfied, often changing plans travel plans to keep a client happy. Thank you, Sean!

Team Canada

"Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much." - Helen

Keller

This quote symbolizes this team's deservance of the high-five award. Together BlueCrest landed a $5M, 8-machine new placement in Canada. This new account, PSPC/Ricoh, had failure points with their existing vendors. Mike Zappavigna and Sean Milchan landed this 8 machine account, however what has made the customer decision to change vendors easier has been the field leadership of the "fabulous five."

This field team, is led by their Francois Girard, who leads by "servant leadership" The team of Matthew, Steven, Terrence, Luis and Mohammadreza have shown flexibility, have worked countless hours, weekends, nights, even working in their garage at night, pulling a "MacGyver," crafting a fabricated solution to satisfy PSPC. Their work exemplifies our service organization and truly we would never be able to continue to bring on board such large clients as PSPC if it was not for the support of our service teams. Thank you, team!

Luis Arruda

Matthew Dickson

Terrence Francis Steven Davis

Mohammadreza Soleimanimehr

ICARE STANDING OVATIONS 2022

Cliff Miller

Cliff works for us as part of the Service organization. He was originally recognized for exercising the ICARE behaviors and received his APPLAUSE award in Q1 of 2022. Subsequently Cliff has received numerous High Fives throughout the year, from internal and external resources, praising Cliff for consistently demonstrating the ICARE behaviors in every interaction. He is always willing to go above and beyond for his team and his customers. Whether working through a tricky installation, important demonstration or helping another tech troubleshoot, Cliff consistently and calmly works the solutions. A true master of his craft, Cliff lives our BlueCrest ICARE behaviors everyday and we are grateful for his service.

Thank you Cliff Miller and Congratulations on being our 1st Standing Ovation Winner for 2022. Lets have a Standing Ovation for Cliff!

Fred Shafar

Fred is a part of Product organization and was originally recognized for exercising the ICARE behaviors and received his APPLAUSE award in Q2 of 2022. Fred was also recognized throughout 2022 by internal and external resources. No problem in print is too great for Fred to solve. His commitment to our customers has many inside and out side of BlueCrest referring to him as their "trusted advisor". He will drop everything to help, he consistently goes above and beyond to help our customers achieve their goals. Demonstrating the ICARE behaviors consistently, both internally and externally, -- we are grateful for Fred's service. Thank you Fred Shafar for being our 2nd Standing Ovation winner for 2022. Lets have a round of Standing Ovation for Fred!

Kim Stokes

Kim Stokes works in the Danbury office and although technically she is a part of the Marketing and Communications Organization, Kim helps everyone! Kim originally was nominated back in Q2 of 2022 for exercising the ICARE behaviors. She too has received several High Fives over the course of 2022. Kim is quick to jump in and help wherever help is needed. VIP demonstration needed? Kim can help! Customer event for 100? Kim can help! Having trouble navigating approvals? Kim is your go-to person! Don't know who to ask or how to move something forward? Ask Kim - if she doesn't know, she'll know who to ask. A "go-to" collaborator, Kim is a trusted resource and a constant source of energy and enthusiasm. She works tirelessly to make our organization successful everyday! Thank you Kim Stokes for being our 3rd Standing Ovation Winner for 2022. Lets have a Standing Ovation for Kim!

Marcin Szopka

Marcin works for us as Senior Software Engineer in our Poland Office. Marcin was originally recognized for exercising the ICARE behaviors with an APPLAUSE award back in Q1 of 2022. He too has received many High Fives over the course of the year. Opportunities large and small are tackled with enthusiasm by Marcin. He is always thinking about how to most efficiently and effectively solve the problem he is facing.

He welcomes ideas, humbly shares his knowledge, is always happy to conduct a workshop and/ or provide one-on-one guidance. His troubleshooting abilities and proactive desire to help others avoid trouble are unparalleled in this space. A true master at his craft, we are so grateful for Marcin's role in making BlueCrest successful. Thank you Marcin for being the 4th Standing Ovation Winner for 2022. Let's have a Standing ovation for Marcin!

Team Canada

Last, but certainly not least, you just read about our phenomenal Team Canada APPLAUSE award for Q4! Thank you Team Canada for being our first Team Standing Ovation Award Winners. You know whats coming - Lets give them a Standing Ovation!

Matthew Dickson

Terrence Francis Steven Davis

Mohammadreza Soleimanimehr Luis Arruda

BlueCrest News

PHD Mail Invests £2m in mailing growth

Burton-on-Trent secure document mailing company PHD Mail has invested £2m in an array of brand-new BlueCrest machinery, capitalizing on growth it has seen in the transactional mail market.

Articles: Printing Impressions

Labor Frustration? Try Automation

By Bob Neubauer

From the article:

Popp has seen the same thing with the automation on the new high-speed BlueCrest inserter installed in Imagine’s Charlotte facility. “It can produce twice as much as the technology from 10 years ago,” he notes. “These days in the printing industry, there’s no such thing as treading water. You are either getting better or you’re getting passed.” Read

Article: Mailing System Technology

Do Mailers Really Need Post-Presort Software?

by Lisa Leslie,

BCC

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a mail service provider (MSP), commingler, or you handle your own mail. Anyone who submits Mail.dats to PostalOne! — whether they’re a mailer of one million mail pieces a year or one billion — already uses data-cleansing and presort software to optimize data and workflow while maximizing postage savings. Presort creates your Mail.dats so you can submit jobs up to the Business Customer Gateway (BCG). Also, if you’re not in Full Seamless Acceptance yet, you likely will be soon.

Read more

Alex Pappalardi

We are pleased to announce that Alex Pappalardi has joined BlueCrest as Vice President of Finance for BCC Software and e-Commerce. Alex will be an employee of BCC Software with dual lines of reporting to Christopher O’Brien, BCC Software President, and Robert Stone, Vice President, e-Commerce.

Read more

YES, IT IS POSSIBLE –NEW MAILPIECE PROCESSING RECORD AT COMMUNISIS LIVERPOOL

by David Jefferies

We have another mail processing record for the Communisis group in the UK. Following a previous record set in 2021 at the company’s Leeds facility, this time it is the Liverpool facility that has claimed the record for most mailpieces processed on a single mail inserter in a 24-hour period. With 484,354 pieces processed on MPS01 between 07:00 20th December and 07:00 21st December 2022.

This incredible production feat shows the performance potential when BlueCrest equipment and motivated, well-trained operators work in harmony. The on-site BlueCrest service team always ensure the equipment is maintained and finely tuned, providing a solid foundation for such production prowess.

In addition, this machine demonstrates the incredible durability of BlueCrest equipment, as this inserter has processed 500 million good mail pieces in its lifetime – further proof of the value of on-site service and maintenance expertise.

Communisis Liverpool Operations Director, Ben Garner commented, “We are always looking to push the envelope – excuse the pun - and we are very proud of this new record achieved together with our technology partner BlueCrest. Notably, Communisis is one of the first clients globally to enter a Productivity Improvement

agreement as part of an Outcome Based Service contract, creating positive incremental opportunities to continuously improve.

At Communisis, in recent months, there has been a particular focus on improving the performance of their high-volume mail inserters. This focus, combined with a consistently high standard of machine maintenance, set the groundwork for achieving the record.

This collaborative effort was driven by: Adam Brown (site lead), Colin Williams (Continuous Improvement engineer), Neil Newby (Client Service Manager), Stuart Griffiths (Professional Services), Andy Van Den Berg (Customer Service Representative), Radoslaw Dymnicki (Customer Service Representative) shows once again how a collaborative partnership between client and vendor delivers tangible gains and benefits both parties.

Article: PI World

BlueCrest Capabilities

New PowerPoint Deck!

Please check out the new BlueCrest Capabilities Deck now available on Brandfolder!

Data-Mail Inc. Invests in Its Future

by Dan Marx

Operating on a growth-focused trajectory, Mandell says Data-Mail invested roughly $30 million in equipment purchases, which includes high-speed finishing equipment from Bluecrest and others. Inkjet printing has helped the company achieve strong speed-to-market. “We’ve replaced slower equipment with faster, newer systems — all focused on turnaround, high speed, and low labor costs,” he notes. “We have a goal of getting more efficient.”

Read more

Marketing Highlights

Hunkeler InnovationDays and C!Print

by David Jefferies

C!Print Lyon, France

BlueCrest and our partners recently attended the print and graphic arts exhibit at C!Print in Lyon, France where we had more solutions in hardware and software on display than ever before.

HUNKELER INNOVATIONDAYS 2023

For four days in February the international print and print-finishing industry gathered in Lucerne, Switzerland for this biennial event. With our hardware, software and workflow solutions for print and mail proudly on show, we were able to renew relationships with many existing clients, welcome newcomers and reinforce partnerships with senior industry leaders who consider this a ‘must be there’ event.

In addition, Hunkeler Innovationdays is also an especially important show for our partnerships with Hunkeler and Horizon for our European graphics business, and HP who showed the IntelliJet Pagewide 2200.

BlueCrest presented the new Velocity mail inserter for the first time at a trade show, plus a remanufactured Epic, with messaging focussed on sustainability – an ever more relevant topic, as the cost of energy and environmental issues are voiced by most international clients. Our new Verifiable Email software solution, which combats phishing, ransomware, and hacking (developed by BlueCrest France) made its debut to considerable interest.

In summary, a good time was had by all. For BlueCrest this was a valuable sales and marketing investment. Once again, Hunkeler Innovationdays cemented its position as the dominant event for client engagement and serious discussions in the print and print finishing industry.

Above: C!Print in Lyon, France 2023

Below: Annette Friedl and team at HID2023

NAPM Recap

by David Bush

Mailing industry experts, customers, vendors and USPS personnel gathered at the TradeWinds resort in St Petersburg, Florida for the National Association of Presort Mailers (NAPM) annual conference again this year. This year’s conference theme was “Discovering Potential in Uncharted Space” and featured many topics including the upcoming changes in the United States Postal Service.

Among the highlights of the information packed three days were presentations by Ron Stroman, Governor, USPS Board of Governors; Tom Foti, USPS VP of Product Solutions and Sharon Owens, USPS VP of Pricing and Costing. The opportunity to hear from and participate in conversations with USPS leaders is invaluable to BlueCrest and our customers as USPS plans centered around “Delivering for America” and upcoming network realignment continue to come into focus.

Ask the Experts

Ask the Experts is a regular online webinar and Q&A where BlueCrest gurus share the latest news and information on our products and services.

ReliaVote

Over three days the BlueCrest sorting team was heavily involved in presentations and conversations on the future of the presort and mailing industry and how BlueCrest is uniquely positioned to help our customers meet their challenging demands.

Above: Dave Bush and Rick Becerra at NAPM 2023

Thought Leadership

From Data through Delivery

By Carl Amacker

For a while now, you've been hearing about our new tagline, From Data Through Delivery. As part of our new branding refresh in 2022, we spent some time crystalizing this message and how we want to tell this story to the world.

From Data through Delivery means that:

BlueCrest is the expert partner for complete postal and parcel automation solutions. We now have the broadest solution set in the industry. Our deep customer relationships have withstood the test of time because we have an eye to the future and are dedicated to innovative results-oriented solutions.

Let's break this down. In order to understand this message in its entirety, we have to tell the story of our acquisitions.

A Brief History

BlueCrest was born in 2018 when we were "carved out" of Pitney Bowes. At the time, we were the best in the business at Mail Production. Since then we have not only grown that business, we jumped into Postal Optimization with our acquisitions of BCC Software, WindowBook, and Fluence Automation. Fluence also unlocked the door to eCommerce, which is now one of our fastest growing lines of business.

Carl Amacker Chief Marketing Officer

Thanks to these acquisitions, as well as strong organic growth, it's easier to tell the story of our solution set and how its allowed us to position BlueCrest across the entire spectrum. Think—from data through delivery.

The Spectrum has Grown

It's important for us to realize that we’re more than Mail Production now—we’re much bigger. What does that mean?

It means we take our expertise and our experience in Mail Production and we transfer it into the Postal Automation world. Our rich experience, our strength of acquisitions, and our innovative and consultative approach will be a powerful tool in building the eCommerce business.

So why BlueCrest, now?

As always, BlueCrest offers a full portfolio of software, hardware, and service for a complete end-to-end approach. We are a one-stop shop for our customers, continually innovating to meet their needs today and into the future. We've applied this approach into our expansion into new markets and new product developments.

We used to think of our end-to-end approach in a linear format. While this still rings true, it might be better if we imagine From Data through Delivery as a thoughtful cycle.

As our sphere of influence continues to grow, so does our capability.

A Whole New World

By building out BlueCrest to provide the broadest solution set in the industry, we have unlocked new markets we didn't think imaginable. Companies like Amazon now look to us as consultative partners to help them achieve their business needs. Stories like this will only continue as we continue to tell the story of From Data through Delivery to the world.

How We Deliver

Although we offer out-of-the-box solutions, we really love to consult our customers and provide tailored solutions based on their specific business needs. We've made a name for ourselves doing this.

We're only able position ourselves as consulting partners to our clients because of the expertise of our people. The From Data through Delivery strategy does not work without BlueCrest team members coming alongside the client every step of the way.

With 1600+ team members and over 950+ service specialists around the globe, we're truly able to provide a level of professional service that no one in the industry can achieve. When you couple this immense advantage with our ICARE behaviors — Innovative, Collaborative, Accountable, Resourcefulness, and Enthusiasm — it's no wonder why our clients turn to us again and again.

Whether its healthcare, elections, direct mail, or the insurance industry—we are fully equipped to assist our clients from data through delivery in a wide spectrum of markets served.

Their success is our success. When every team member at BlueCrest believes that, we develop an eye for the future, we deepen our relationships, we grow, and we win. Every team member contributes to this story—from the moment the data comes in, to the day our solutions are delivered. Let's keep telling that story today, and tomorrow.

Engagement Team Member Milestones

45 years

Dave Straface

40 years

First Quarter, 2023

Every quarter, we like to celebrate the many team members who have reached milestone achievements of 5, 10, 15, 20 years—and beyond! Thank you to each one of you for all that you to do make BlueCrest great.

50 years

Lynn Kilpatrick

Bernard Mothersill

35 years

Buu Tu

John Young

Jose Hernandez

Jian Hu

Roy Purvis

Siamak Farahani

Michael Fonte

Richard Rochford

20 years

Vance Sykes

Kelly Ufland

Julie Mussard

Eric Jamois

30 years

Laurent Orpheuille

Mark Fincannon

Zain Hemraj

Kourosh Persangi

Antony Rosecamp

Frank Sutcliffe

25 years

Franck Beaudouin

Gregory Volt

Paulo Dossantos

Richard Fico

Jorge Rodriguez

Mel Niven

Guido Rietti

15 years

Tsutomu Okada

Cole Gray

William Nadler

Christopher Thackston

5 years

Craig Rafferty

Ludovic Pelurson

Jonathan Pennel

Donald Chapman

Joe Hunt

Kevin Kavanaugh

Cameron Beach

William Shafar

Jerry Smith

Jason Bellevile

Regis Laister

Keith Alexander

10 years

Reik Boehme

Laurent Marc

Stanley Bundotich

Richard Cayemitte

Richard Rivera