Creating a Build-a-Book Service for a Major Mutual Fund

Our client is one of the largest mutual funds in the financial industry and one of the oldest asset management companies in the world.

This mutual fund needed to present current financial information to their clients in a highly-personalized format. With information changing quarterly, they also needed these documents to be easily altered. This customization and personalization played a vital part in helping our client stand out in the extremely competitive financial services industry.

Previously, the personalization of books had to be done by hand, with stacks of each page being printed and conveyed to a production floor for manual assembly. This was both expensive and wasteful, as excess copies of each page had to be printed to avoid running out during assembly.

This excess printing meant up to half of all materials would be disposed of each quarter as they quickly became obsolete. With over 100,000 books created annually – this was creating an ever increasing problem.

Alongside the additional costs associated with having the books assembled by hand, it also meant there was no way of creating tables of contents quickly and at scale, as each book was unique. The reader would have to leaf through the book to find the relevant information they were looking for.

If an error was spotted or information changed, the slow turnaround times from manual assembly made it impossible to make corrections in the necessary time frames.

To address the challenge, Harte Hanks enhanced the current Print-On-Demand offerings within the nexTouch system. We introduced a robust feature that allows users to create personalized documents and portfolios digitally and save them in their online accounts.

Instead of printing excess amounts of each page and assembling customized books manually, once designed, these books can be printed directly, improving cost effectiveness, minimizing waste and speeding up production time.

We also added various features to nexTouch, including:

• Customizable Covers: Users can create personalized covers based on the individual they are presenting to, ensuring a distinctive and professional appearance.
• Content Selection: The most up-to-date content is made available, so users can curate and arrange chapters for their customized documents.
• Search and Rediscovery Capability: Users can search and rediscover elements from previous meetings, enabling them to leverage successful presentations and enhance personalization.