Client Overview
Headquartered in Southeastern Wisconsin, Quad/Graphics is the world’s largest privately held printer of magazines, catalogs and other commercial products. With 12,000 dedicated employees and annual sales over $2 billion, they use industry-leading data-through-distribution capabilities to make print more immediate, more targeted and more relevant to the recipient than ever before. Quad/Graphics has custom-developed software to manage the process every step of the way.
Challenge / Issue
Recent trends in globalization and competition from online media have led to significant changes in customer demands and dynamically altered service standards for the world’s leading printers. Internationally, the expanding middle class is providing growth opportunities for more traditional printed material. While in North America, customers are demanding highly customized, highly targeted printed pieces to drive high volume, national marketing campaigns. With business demands calling for increased flexibility, Quad/Graphics needed a number of new, loosely coupled systems to better serve its national and international customers. Developing new systems and successfully integrating them with existing architectures posed a significant challenge to the printing giant.
Centare Group Solution
Centare Group was chosen to assist Quad/Graphics in their strategic efforts though combinations of application architecture design, development and life cycle management. Quad/Graphics decided to use Microsoft .NET 3.X Framework technologies as their standard for next generation printing and service delivery platforms. Utilizing Microsoft’s WCF and .NET 3.X, Centare Group assisted Quad/Graphics in developing loosely coupled business functionality while unifying existing customer and operational systems. Centare Group’s capability to scale applications to demanding customer needs and flex to changes in business priorities has been of considerable value to Quad/Graphics. By working together, Centare Group and Quad/Graphics have laid the foundation for future growth. Utilizing best practices and key pieces of the .NET Framework enables Quad/Graphics to remain agile and creative in what they offer the market. Quad/Graphics can readily provide new services and automation across internal business processes and directly to customers.
Client Benefits
- Functionality is delivered based upon business unit need
- Business objectives are met for revenue growth
- Supports internationalization for weights, measures and currency
- Modular, service-oriented architecture (SOA) allows for flexibility for business growth
About Centare Group
Founded in 1999, Centare Group is a software development consulting firm with 35 employees headquartered in Brookfield, Wis. It has developed software solutions for clients around the world and was recently named to the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in the country. Centare Group is recognized by Milwaukee Magazine as one of Southeastern Wisconsin’s Best Places to Work and is listed as a Top 10 Small Business by the Waukesha County Chamber of Commerce. Centare Group CEO Dave Glyzewski was also selected as a 2008 Bravo! Entrepreneur Award winner by the Small Business Times. The firm concentrates its efforts in:
- Software development using .NET, Java/J2EE and Actuate technologies
- Business process improvement
- Systems integration
- Mobile solutions development
- Strategic technology assessments
- Training and implementation of agile software development practices