Over the past several months, as OnFulfillment approaches its Silver Anniversary, we’ve been using this blog space to look back at how our business has evolved over the past 25 years. From marketing and event fulfillment to on-demand printing, branded and promotional merchandise, warehousing, and kitting, it’s been interesting to see how far we’ve come and reflect on what we’ve accomplished.
Today, we thought it would be appropriate to end this journey by acknowledging the people who made it all possible.
As we state in the OnFulfillment manifesto, the greatest achievements require a team. While solo artists can certainly produce beautiful and thought-provoking music, they cannot match the power and complexity of multiple musicians and instruments working together. A band can express and accomplish things that a single musician can’t.
Here at OnFulfillment, we’ve assembled what we believe is the best band in the industry. While the customer service reps and account managers get the most visibility, since they are the ones who deal primarily with the public, it’s the software programmers, project managers, and fulfillment and procurement experts who form the backbone of the operation. Without them, there is no way we could deliver the quality and quantity of services we currently offer. They keep the machine running smoothly, applying their decades of expertise and making the necessary adjustments required to continue serving the constantly evolving needs of sales, marketing, human resources, and training professionals around the world. We are extremely grateful for their commitment and contributions, and they don’t always get the recognition they deserve.
The Most Important Team Member
As critical as the internal team is, they wouldn’t be necessary without the most important team member of all: you, our customers.
While this sentiment may be a bit trite, it’s nevertheless true: without you, we would simply have no reason to exist. If you didn’t see the value of combining all the solo artists throughout your organization—printers, fulfillment houses, event managers, shippers, promo distributors, gifting platforms—into a single band, we would have little to offer. And if you weren’t happy with the level of services we offered, we never would have survived five years, let alone 25.
So, to our customers: thank you for your business and loyalty. Since we opened our doors in 1999, we have provided printing, marketing and event fulfillment, and shipping services to more than 1 million customers at hundreds of businesses around the world. Whether Fortune 500 companies or small startups, upwards of 98% of these customers have decided to renew their contracts and keep working with us. That’s a testament not only to the quality of our work, but also to the skills of our team. We appreciate the compliment.
Thank you for giving us a reason to come to work every day. Life at OnFulfillment is never boring, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. We wake up every morning enthused and excited about what the day will bring. Nothing is ever predictable; every day offers the opportunity to develop a new skill or perfect an old one. It makes time fly and leaves us all with a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day. Working at OnFulfillment is truly fulfilling, thanks to our customers.
Thank you for constantly challenging us. No two jobs are exactly the same, and oftentimes we get requests for a new feature or capability that requires a modification to our underlying software. That is complex and difficult work. Our dedicated team of developers and dev ops professionals love that kind of challenge.
Whether it’s developing a new single sign-on (SSO) implementation to support a customer’s unique marketing, HR, training, or partner requirements or designing a secure solution that allows users to safely share confidential information, our team uses the latest tools to deliver unmatched adaptability and growth. Tapping years of combined experience and flexibility with advanced asset management software, our engineers relish the challenge of building the sorts of customized, robust, secure, and scalable solutions that our customers have come to expect from OnFulfillment.
Finally, thank you for making us work better and smarter. Every good business strives for continuous improvement. At OnFulfillment we don’t have to look for those opportunities, they come to us.
Virtually every day we are presented with a new request that strains our resources, capabilities, and skill set. Impossible deadlines, insurmountable obstacles, unachievable quantities—we’ve seen them all. While many of our competitors would simply say it can’t be done, we embrace the challenge as an opportunity to find newer, better, and smarter ways to do our jobs. While not every request can be fully achieved—unfortunately we can’t turn back time or change the laws of physics—more often than not, we are able to come up with a workable solution that meets the customer’s needs. These skills can then be applied to future projects, enhancing our services and improving our capabilities—something that benefits all customers moving forward. Saying “yes” has its benefits.
Living Our Principles
In our manifesto, we list five specific principles that guide our decision making and drive the business. They are:
- Every company is in the software business
- Hire the best people
- Embrace change and technology
- Always work to be better
- Listen to our customers; they have the best ideas
Over the past quarter century, these principles have served us well. By focusing on our software, we’ve developed a powerful platform that allows us to deliver unique services and features that will set us apart from the competition.
Hiring the best people and embracing change and technology contributes to the continuous improvement of the software platform, which continues to drive new business.
Finally, working to do better requires listening to our customers, understanding their needs, and accepting the challenges they present.
Over the past 25 years, we think we’ve been pretty successful living up to these principles. The proof is in the performance of the company. Once again, thank you to our team and our customers for making it such a memorable journey.
Our goal for the next 25 years is to continue serving these principles and build a business we can continue to be proud of. I think we’ll do it.
