In its 60 years, The Allied Group has reinvented itself several times.
First, it expanded from printing into a business-forms management services. Then, it added promotional products, mailing and fulfillment services, digital printing and even Internet solutions. Today, it bills itself as a one-stop document and information management company.
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Being versatile has paid off, helping Allied’s revenue rise 6 percent, to more than $20 million, in the last year alone. Jack Biddick, the company’s vice president of operations, sees that success as the dividends of paying attention to clients’ needs and responding with specific actions.
President Robert Clement, who co-owns the company with Richard Riley, says that in everything Allied does, it looks for “what brings value to the product.” That, he says, is “one of the things that separate us” from competitors.
Founded in 1946 as Allied Printing, the company it still has a document production facility and sales office in its original building, at 333 Bucklin St. in Providence. But Allied is now based in Cranston, and also has a facility in Cumberland and an office in Needham, Mass. Altogether, The Allied Group employs about 165 people.
Over the years, the company has changed names several times.
It became Allied Business Forms in the mid-1980s, after it became clear that “clients wanted more than ink on paper,” Clement said. So Allied began specializing in business-form management, providing the printing, inventory, warehousing and management reports for invoices and other business forms.
In the early 1990s, the company became Allied Business Documents, aiming to expand into other means of conveying information, such as promotional products. It also began offering a wide range of commercial printing services.
Clement said Allied has adapted its services based on its biweekly meetings with clients to discuss their forms and document management accounts.
“It allows us to understand their businesses and their needs,” he said.
Once a client’s need has been identified, company leaders brainstorm internally with department heads, Clement said. Then the company brainstorms with its clients to come up with the best solution, and looks to its internal capabilities to be sure that solution is feasible.
In the mid-1990s, for example, when the Internet first became a factor in business, Biddick said The Allied Group realized that implementing an online ordering system would create added value for many of its clients.
When its business-form business was declining, the company expanded to include direct mail, commercial printing and promotional products among its services.
The company’s determination to provide marketing and back-end services, such as logistics support, also grew out of its continuing conversations with clients. Now, those business segments are two of Allied’s fastest growing.
“We reinvented ourselves, and we’re actually growing,” Clement said, noting the company’s recent growth in revenue.
Today, the company provides about 30 different services – from marketing, to printing to warehousing to distribution.
One-on-one personalized direct marketing creates personalized marketing materials, such as a prospective customer’s first name, printed on a direct-mailing brochure for boots at a department store, Clement said. That brochure might also include a map to the department store from the person’s home address. It might include the number of steps.
The Allied Group’s marketing division also can create personalized URLs, for each person a company wishes to reach through an online marketing campaign, Clement said. Then Allied can track how many people, and which, respond to a campaign – and even what their interests are, based on what areas they click through while visiting the Web site.
“The per-piece cost is a bigger investment,” as opposed to traditional direct marketing pieces, Clement said. “But the return is much better. If it were just a higher cost, but not a better way of doing it, we wouldn’t recommend it.”
That sort of one-on-one marketing can be more effective than mass direct mailings, he said, especially when targeting a specific group of people with high potential to be future customers. Allied’s marketing division creates custom databases for clients based on the criteria they provide, such as gender, age, being a homeowner or renter, and so on.
The Allied Group has worked on 20 campaigns since launching its marketing division earlier this year, Clement said.
Offering more at the back end of the full-service spectrum also has boosted revenue for the company, Biddick said. The Allied Group’s third-party logistics services – which can include assembling custom kits for clients – evolved naturally out of client conversations and a recognition of the company’s warehousing and distribution capabilities.
For example, he said, a client who manufactures machinery might want kits with safety glasses and gauges made up, to go along with an order.
If Allied had the account, its fulfillment division would purchase the safety glasses and gauges from a third party, then have employees assemble and package them together and send them to the client’s customers, Biddick said.
“What used to be a pain for [clients] is exciting for us,” he said. “This is one of our growth areas.”
About 85 percent of all the services the company provides are done in-house, Clement said, and that also adds value, because when a customer needs something or has a question, Allied can respond promptly.
Clement said offering both front-end services, such as marketing, and back-end services, such as direct mailing and kit assembly, positions Allied to create partnerships with its clients, most of whom use more than one service.
Working closely with clients helps Allied keep coming up with new ideas, he said.
On Aug. 30, Allied announced a move that adds to its ability to deliver new solutions: the acquisition of Insight Marketing Group of Pawtucket, a full-service graphic design and marketing firm established in 1997.
“We were looking for a graphic design/marketing organization, but one that really had strong business knowledge that goes with our model,” Clement said. Allied has hired Insight President David Speakman to direct its marketing division; he is one of three former Insight staff who now form Allied’s “creative arm.”
“This allows us to sit at the conference room table with our [clients] and bring value to the origins of the ideas and concepts” for marketing campaigns, Clement said. “It allows us to be there from the beginning.”
He added: “This method is our R&D.”
