Semiconductor manufacturer Analog Devices Inc., Norwood, MA, last month signed a contract with Harte-Hanks Response Management, San Antonio, TX to strengthen its teleservices and fulfillment capabilities in regions throughout the Asian subcontinent. Analog Devices’ internal call center will be integrated with 25 of Harte-Hanks’ call centers with an additional 10 call centers opening throughout Asia and Europe next year.
Prior to working with Harte-Hanks, Analog Devices was unable to ship catalogs to callers who requested them. “We had no literature fulfillment function in Southeast Asia,” said Joseph Laskowski, director of corporate marketing services for Analog Devices.
Harte-Hanks, who will draw on its partnership with WP Group, an Asian-based direct marketing service company, will also be handling advertising, direct mail and database management for the company using a worldwide strategy. Harte-Hanks recently began providing this service to many of their clients to help them compete in the global market.
“There is an increasing trend for our customers to run their programs on a worldwide basis,” said Robert Howells, director of international business development for Harte-Hanks. “It allows them to roll out marketing systems very quickly, where there is fierce competition. What we are doing is replicating our systems in the US and putting them in place throughout the world.”
“They need to have a local presence which is close to their market,” Howells said. “Therefore it is important to us that their applications in Southeast Asia are formatted in local languages.”
Analog Devices which has a lot of personal contact with its clients through field engineers, benefits from having their materials formatted in the local language.
“There is a lot of hand holding going on with our engineers meeting clients,” Laskowski said. “Harte-Hanks provides us with a lot of application support to make this easier.”
