The Allied Group: The Allied Group is all of that and more.
Allied’s maturation is a model example of how all organizations must regularly review its mission, and alter what it does to keep pace with change. To be viewed by clients as a valuable partner and supplier that has helped that client grow — as The Allied Group has —is the highest form of praise a company can receive. The proof for Allied is in year upon year of steady growth. Annual sales were $9.3 million in 1994, when the company was known as Allied Business Forms and considered Providence its corporate headquarters. Annual sales have grown steadily over the past 13 years to $14.7 million in 1999 and close to $20 million this year. Growth like that doesn’t happen by accident. It takes planning, execution, follow through and follow up. “In the early 1990s, Allied recognized that the role of a traditional business forms printer was going to drastically change, and not for the better,” said company president and co-owner Robert C. Clement. “The product was on the decline mainly due to changing technology. As a result, we spent a lot of time delving into what our true value to the marketplace was and how we could grow that value. “Our success to date had been that we had always sold accounts, not products, and that we were able to offer our clients a truly customized, one-stop solution. “In order to take this to the next level, we wanted to stretch our value proposition from the very beginning of the process all the way to the end. For the past 15 years, we have continued to diversify our offerings to our clients by adding products and services to both ends of the business spectrum,” he said.
“We want to help our clients succeed. When they succeed, we succeed. It’s that simple, and that is the key to what The Allied Group is all about.” Historical strengths shape future By producing forms less often and storing them at its warehouse, Allied was an early adopter of the growing supply management trend of “just-in-time” delivery. It relieved clients of the burden of keeping track of forms inventory, which removed an unnecessary distraction for clients. Allied’s gradual shift away from business forms printing toward information management laid the groundwork for its future. Although Allied still sells and services print management programs, the company continued its evolution into a firm that seeks to drive communications strategies for superior top line performance for its clients. What does that mean? It means capturing the attention of a client; understanding their needs and where that company wants to go; and then using an arsenal of tools, products, services and people-driven expertise to help the client get there.
In those cases, Allied laid out a plan that helped the college and the medical device company get over those hurdles. Once approved by the client, Allied executed the plan. Combined, the strategic planning and tactical execution amount to a powerful dose of added value that bonds clients to Allied and creates the foundation of partnerships and sustained growth for all involved. And once Allied proves itself with its litany of expert services, that positive experience opens other selling opportunities with the same client. Take higher education. Allied worked for two years to win a particular college in southern New England as a new client. The relationship started with an admissions director who was trying to figure out how to get more admitted students to actually enroll in the school. It is common practice for schools to admit many more students that it can accept, because prospective college students shop for schools and want many choices. This Connecticut-based school’s admissions director and the dean of student affairs wanted to get more kids to enroll. Allied created a variable data print campaign that spoke directly to targeted individuals and included personal information that the students themselves had submitted in their admission applications. The digitally-produced multi-color campaign that combined printed material with email follow up and use of personalized web sites worked. While the campaign won last year’s PEAK Award Grand Prize, that’s not the most impressive part. More importantly, the school’s yield jumped dramatically. The admissions director and the dean of students were thrilled. That success gave Allied an internal advocate of paramount credibility for other selling opportunities within the college. Allied’s sales representatives have been showing that successful VDP and cross media solution to other colleges and universities with an intent to duplicate that initial success.
It may have taken a while to sort out all the services the company had to offer, but Clement led an executive team that has put together a hard-to-beat array of service offerings. Leading the charge with Clement is co-owner and company chairman, Rick Riley, son of the founder. Beyond the top two executives is a group of vice presidents that serves as part of the company’s executive leadership team: Bob Delisle in finance; Brian Butler in sales and marketing; Bob Childs in program management; Jack Biddick in operations; Michael Murphy in information technology, and Kevin Riley as general sales manager. Clement came to Allied in 1986. He worked for eight years as a sales representative and district manager for Wallace Computer services, which derived much of its sales from business forms printing. Clement absorbed a lot about the forms business. The Pittsburgh area native was itching for a change. He started looking for new professional opportunities that included an equity interest and came to New England. He met Riley, and the two became fast friends. Clement explained his vision of where he thought the business forms market was headed, and it made sense to Riley who brought him aboard and a successful partnership was formed. “Rick and I have grown to become very close friends,” Clement said. “I have all the respect in the world for him and for the opportunities he has given me.” Putting the pieces together Allied was an early adopter of utilizing the Internet for order entry, and had the on-line system called the Allied Virtual Office operational by 1998.
That boosted Allied print production capability and put the company square into quality color offset reproduction. Now the confluence of a powerful mix of information management understanding, growing expertise in warehouse and supply capability, black and white forms printing, the emergence of digital reproduction equipment, and offset printing, opened new opportunities for Allied. The team seized the moment. Growth and acquisition was not complete. The leadership felt Allied needed a stronger marketing component. The company acquired Insight Marketing Group, a marketing and graphic design studio. Owner David Speakman was highly regarded in the Providence marketplace and had built a solid client list. He had grown his business to a point where he needed the capabilities of a print service provider to increase his value to clients. The deal made complete sense. Today, Speakman runs the seven-person in-house operation. He led the internal rebranding effort at Allied that brought clearer focus to what Allied is and what it does. The whole new corporate identity from logos to slide show presentations to the corporate web site aids everyone who makes proposals to clients and prospects. “The most significant addition to the front end was the establishment of our marketing communications team,” Clement said. “We knew that if we were involved in the strategic decisions of our clients from the beginning and had a seat at the table with their decision makers, we would then be able to add value to the relationship by introducing and recommending the best products and services necessary to help them achieve their goals from start to finish.” With the marketing and design team in-house, the four areas of core services came into sharper focus: marketing communications, printing services, workflow processes and supply chain management.
All marketing efforts rely on a buyer-centric marketing model that encompasses pre-sell and post-sell activities. Generating an ongoing pipeline of prospective clients is a major component to the overall strategy. Printing Services. Printing, which once drove all revenue growth in Allied’s early days, now contributes less to the bottom line, but still serves as vital anchor to Allied’s ability to serve a harbor filled with clients looking for help. There’s commercial printing on multi-color offset presses, a production area devoted to multi-color, high-run digital production equipment, business documents printing, letterpress printing for newsletters and stationery, and large format printing. Workflow processes. Efficient management of workflow processes at Allied is synonymous with good circulation in the human body to keep oxygen flowing to the vital organs. The whole operation can’t function without the interconnectedness of workflow. From document management to digital asset management, inventory management of various items from packaging tubes to calendars to ad specialties that are added to kits — they are all important. Online order entry is as crucial today as when it was launched years ago. Document storage systems and a growing web to print portal all help Allied’s ability to process information nimbly and be responsive to clients. Supply Chain Management. Supply chain management is the ability to procure, store and distribute literature, products, parts, and samples of all kinds. As companies across all industries compete for the attention of consumers and other businesses, they each ratchet up the stakes by including anything from pens to cosmetic samples, to reward incentives and more.
The company just completed construction of a special room inside its Cumberland, R.I. distribution center for one client in the Life Sciences industry that needs special packages sent to clients for cord blood collection and storage. In the accessed controlled room that Allied recently completed, an employee will stand at a work table with shelves filled with different components that need to be added to the individual kits that are to be mailed to the firm’s clients and then returned. The individual kits include a syringe, a plastic bag to hold collected blood, a rubber strap for the person to apply when blood is being drawn, a printed bar coded label for use in returning the package to the research firm, and more. It is a stunning example of what Allied will do to accommodate a client. “On the back end, we listened to customers’ needs and took the appropriate steps to become a supply chain logistics partner by acquiring the proper software, space resources, approval from the FDA, and even building a white room,” Clement explained. “Our clients were in need of a solution that would help them fulfill the logistic needs of their clients. Now we are able to deliver that final step for a client. While we still provide traditional print, mail and fulfillment services, more than ever, our clients really do get a one-stop solution with Allied.” |
For
a company with roots as a business forms printer in Providence, R.I.
that stretch back to 1946, The Allied Group is a company with a corporate
strategy that continually evolves over time to meet the emerging needs
of a dynamic marketplace. 
It
doesn’t matter if the client is a college that needs to increase
its yield — the number of students accepted into the college who
ultimately decide to enroll — or a medical device company that
is stymied on how to get custom-built blood collection and storage kits
for research sent to its clients (and then returned) in a timely manner.
Positioned
for the new millennium
Another
major strategic move was the 2001 acquisition of KeyPrint, a commercial
printing company in which Allied now occupies as its corporate headquarters.
As more of Allied’s work shifted away from pure business forms
printing, Allied began to place more printing work with KeyPrint through
the 1990s. The relationship grew to the point where an acquisition was
a logical step.
Four
pillars that drive performance
Vendors
who can manage those items and in many cases include explanatory literature
(and even produce that literature) are grabbing market share. Those
in the know call it third party logistics or 3PL. Allied is a player
in that market and plans to grow. 
.
