Time Customer Service, the magazine fulfillment center for the Time Inc. family of magazines, selected Dialogue software from Exstream Software Inc., Lexington, KY, for use in creating direct mail pieces and other customer contact, Exstream said yesterday.
TCS executes document creation and fulfillment for 40 magazines, including Time and People. TCS also manages five facilities involved in the mail processing, telemarketing, warehousing and shipping of subscription-related materials for its magazines.
Using Dialogue's Dynamic Data Access module, TCS will collect and update customer data from various sources, then incorporate the data — such as magazine rates or special premium offers — into one-to-one targeted direct mail pieces, renewal notices, billing statements and other customer correspondence.
TCS said Dialogue also saves the company time and money by eliminating the need to change the application design to accommodate different print and electronic outputs.
“Dialogue allowed us to process 683 documents per CPU second versus only 83 documents per CPU second with our previous technology,” said Terry Kaufmann, manager of applications development at TCS.
“Additionally, Dialogue's ease of use enables us to deploy staff of varying skill sets throughout our production facilities,” said Wayne Coe, project leader of marketing and fulfillment systems at TCS.
