How Print Management Software Powers Garney’s Growth & Operations
As your company grows, two challenges become clear: maintaining brand consistency and finding print management software that eliminates bottlenecks and outsourcing. In this case, the company is Garney and the solution is Smartpress’ Marketing on Demand Platform™ (MOD).
As a water and wastewater infrastructure company, Garney needed a print marketing tool that did more than make a splash. See how MOD streamlined their print, marketing and fulfillment needs in one simple place.
Key Takeaways
- MOD centralized Garney’s marketing collateral, ensuring brand consistency across multiple locations, while simplifying access to pre-approved, customizable templates.
- Project managers and employees can self-serve for signage and marketing materials, reducing turnaround times, bottlenecks and outsourcing costs.
- The platform supports Garney’s growth with faster deployment, standardized processes and increased capacity for creative teams, all while maintaining quality and compliance.
“We needed a scalable solution that would eliminate the delays and costs of outsourcing, while empowering employee-owners to produce signage and marketing collateral quickly and confidently.”
Two Major Hurdles, One Clear Solution
Before teaming up with Smartpress, Garney found themselves contending with two operational roadblocks common with growing businesses:
1. Brand consistency
Solid branding is essential to business and organizations of all sizes. The more consistent your branding is, both visually and contextually, the more recognizable you are and the more trust you build with clients. If your branding is scattered, it’s not going to make an impact.
“Garney faced the challenge of maintaining brand consistency across a growing number of regional offices and project teams, especially during a company-wide logo refresh,” said Neil Ryan on behalf of Garney’s Creative team.
2. The cost of outsourcing
If your team isn’t capable of providing or producing marketing materials yourself, outsourcing makes total sense. But if the cost of that outsourcing means your team doesn’t get shipments on time or the quality of the products suffers, it doesn’t make sense at all. And worse? It makes your business look unreliable and unprofessional.
“We needed a scalable solution that would eliminate the delays and costs of outsourcing, while empowering employee-owners to produce signage and marketing collateral quickly and confidently,” said Ryan.
After understanding what Garney was up against, we knew MOD was the print management solution for the job.
Print Management Software Like No Other
MOD is a one-stop shop print marketing portal. Ideal for businesses with an annual print spend of at least $50K, it streamlined Garney’s corporate-wide print, marketing and fulfillment needs in one place.
It’s designed for distributed enterprises with hundreds, even thousands, of locations and allows end-users to order print-on-demand marketing collateral and branded merchandise from Smartpress’ distribution facility – all with total brand control.
“By centralizing collateral production, Garney’s MOD platform supports brand consistency and operational scalability – eliminating outsourcing delays and enabling teams to focus on building infrastructure for our communities,” said Ryan.
Customize Assets for Every Location
MOD was the right fit for Garney because of the sheer breadth of what it can do, including customizing print and marketing collateral, plus simplifying fulfillment for multiple locations. You can customize materials locally, maintain brand consistency across the board and even store social media or retail assets.
“The MOD platform resolved [our] issues by streamlining access to pre-approved, customizable templates, making it easy for teams to stay on-brand and focused on infrastructure delivery without compromising quality or speed.”
Ensure Brand Consistency Across All Collateral
MOD ensures your brand is always protected, consistent and recognizable. With all collateral in one place, you can easily manage updates, customize for each location and still maintain brand standards.
Smartpress’ in-house printing keeps your colors true across every piece, while review and approval options give you oversight before production. It’s an intuitive, centralized solution that makes staying on-brand easy.
Web-to-Print Software with a Human Touch
Software. Portal. Platform. It can sound like MOD is backed by more ones and zeroes than actual people – but it’s not. Along with a powerful, flexible platform, you get the world-class service Smartpress is known for – aka a dedicated team and account manager, plus quick answers (we hate waiting, too).
Making MOD Work for Garney
For Garney, integrating their business into a workflow management system like MOD was a collaborative process. From the project kickoff to Garney’s MOD site going live, that process spanned about two and half months.
“Garney came to Smartpress with a clear brand system and a list of ‘mission-critical’ assets to launch: jobsite signage, decals, safety signage and business stationery. We then worked with the Smartpress team to translate those into branded (and in some cases, editable) templates.
“Smartpress guided the technical configuration, while Garney oversaw content and design validation. Together, we iterated until the platform functioned to meet Garney’s goals,” said Ryan.
Once their MOD site was live, Garney launched their first wave of products and expanded gradually while ensuring daily operations were uninterrupted. And all with Smartpress’ personalized support whenever they needed it.
“We collaborate with the Smartpress team on an ongoing basis, especially for various print projects that aren’t necessarily items we would want to add to the store,” said Ryan. “They serve as both strategic partners as well as our go-to print vendor regardless of what type of product we’re ordering.”
Tips for Using the MOD Print Marketing Portal
Incorporating a new tool into your business strategy is no small thing. It takes careful thought and consideration of every aspect – and then you actually have to do it. Take a few tips from Ryan about merging Garney and the Marketing on Demand Platform:
- Stage in waves: “Don’t wait for perfection. Launch with your highest-use items, gather feedback, then expand.”
- Be mindful of configuration timelines: “Build that reality into timelines – decide early who internally approves proofs to mitigate any potential configuration delays.”
- Work with your Smartpress rep: “[They’re] like a strategic partner, not a ticketing system. Consistent communication shortens cycles and reduces rework. Communication with our rep Sophia has led to a great partnership for instances where we need to order something specific but don’t necessarily need it to be a product on the site.”
Printing signage like Garney? We’ve got eco-friendly options.
“MOD directly supports our scale. As Garney continues to grow nationwide, we can maintain a unified brand without placing more burden on corporate staff or adding headcount.”
A Platform That Performs
With MOD’s print management services backing them up, Garney’s business operations are a whole lot more streamlined, and their team is a whole lot less stressed.
“Our biggest efficiency win is empowering autonomy while maintaining essential guardrails. Project leaders no longer wait on Garney’s Creative team or an outside vendor to produce signs and stationery.
“Instead, they log in (SSO), choose a product or customize a pre-approved template, and order with confidence. That shift drastically reduced turnaround time, internal bottlenecks and one-off design requests, while also ensuring every installation, office and jobsite is consistently branded,” said Ryan.
MOD is the web to print software for printers and businesses like Garney because it’s designed for large enterprises (up to thousands of locations, remember?). Growth isn’t a deterrent to its effectiveness.
“MOD directly supports our scale. As Garney continues to grow nationwide, we can maintain a unified brand without placing more burden on corporate staff or adding headcount,” said Ryan. “That consistency reinforces trust, professionalism and safety expectations across jobsites.”
Results You Can Measure
Garney’s felt the positive impact of MOD in a number of areas. While Ryan said it’s still early in the rollout, Garney’s already seen:
- Massive time savings for project managers, having a one-stop shop to order all the necessary jobsite signage.
- Larger capacity for their Creative and Marketing team to focus on larger initiatives rather than small sign requests from individual project managers.
- Fewer vendor quotes and revisions due to standardization.
- Improved compliance with new brand standards after their logo refresh.
- Faster deployment of signage to jobsites and offices.
“One platform equals one source of truth. Instead of files scattered across inboxes, servers or vendor portals, everything lives in one place – branded, up-to-date and ready to order,” said Ryan. “That consolidation protects brand integrity, speeds up decision-making and simplifies onboarding for new employee-owners who need to self-serve on day one.”
Leverage Print Management Software for Your Business
When Garney came to Smartpress, they needed to solve two problems: brand inconsistency and high outsourcing costs. With Smartpress’ Marketing on Demand Platform, they were able to customize, print and manage all of their assets for all of their locations from one place, boost efficiency and empower employees in their decision-making. And the metrics keep going up.
“Smartpress didn’t just give us a tool, they gave us a system that mirrors how we operate in the field: controlled, predictable, scalable and high-quality,” said Ryan. “The combination of print expertise, platform reliability and responsive partnership is what made the implementation successful and sustainable.”
