Penny Publications, LLC
www.pennypublications.com

A longtime partner, Penny Publications, LLC, is the first profile in our new, Customer Spotlight series. This large volume publisher produces, publishes and distributes pencil puzzle magazines and books. They have over 90 subscription based publications and print around 200 individual books each year. Penny Publications has been in business since 1973, and we’ve been working together for more than 15 years.

Here’s what Rita Skog, the Vice President of Direct Marketing and Fulfillment Operations, had to say about our partnership:

Which departments use Multipub at your company?

  • Data Entry: For order activity, as well as daily and monthly deposit balancing
  • Customer Service: Daily customer inquiries, on-line data entry and customer account adjustments, including cancels, refunds, reshipments, etc.
  • Marketing Staff: Queries, promotional reports, renewal tracking and general data base management and use
  • Accounting Department: The Deferred Income Report, Accounts/Receivable (A/R), month end account balances and daily deposit summary and balances

How has your business changed? How has Multipub adapted to meet your evolving needs?

We had a major change about 10 to 12 years ago when we consolidated all our subscribers into the in-house Multipub fulfillment system. This doubled our customer base, but with Multipub’s WEB Ascii Import module and the implementation of an automated payment processing system, we were able to handle the increase efficiently and easily.

The payment processor uses an optical scanning device that compares payments made to amounts due. In addition to processing payments, it images the checks and sends them, electronically, to the bank for deposit. Without the Web Ascii Import module, we would not have been able to automate the process.

Why did your organization choose Multipub?

We chose Multipub, because of its flexibility, accounting system strength and the level of support it provided to companies our size. The accounting packages and daily balance were important to us, and finally, we were looking for great customer service.

Which Multipub features are most beneficial to your organization?

We needed a system that could handle both subscriptions and one-shot (book) products. Being able to access and view both kinds of products on a single customer record has saved our team valuable time. Previously, we had to access records for each product to make changes to customer account information. It has been a huge help for our customer service team.

We also enjoy how easily Multipub integrates with outside vendors, such as mailing houses or letter shops, NCOA list cleaning agents and/or on-line credit card processors. The ability to import account orders and/or renewals from outside sources, partners and our in-house payment processing and transmission system has also been very helpful. Using their Web Ascii Import Module has helped us increase efficiency and reliability in collecting order data.

Has Multipub done any customization for you?

Yes, they’ve done quite a bit. They’ve added order input utilities to assist us in appending correct postal delivery codes to an order. They also created a data input module and customized shipment output files to accommodate our mail management system.

That being said, one of the great things about Multipub is its flexibility. There are a lot of functions built into the system that we’re using in a new way to meet our needs here. We’ve found it’s a very rich and robust system and are able to be very creative in our usage of it.