Why we work more efficiently in a down economy (and how you can, too!)

By John Davis, Alabama Graphics President

I recently said to a co-worker, “This business is so much easier to run when the economy is doing great!”

Of course, this seems to be a fairly obvious statement. But it is so true, on so many levels.

When the economy went south several years ago, we, like most businesses, were forced to really analyze every expense, every project, every prospect, every move we made. Our company’s biggest expense during “good times” was a huge amount of employee overtime pay. Being efficient wasn’t as top a priority as volume. And why not? We had plenty of volume, and business was booming from our AEC clients.

eProcurement: Save Time and Money

If you caught our recent blog post about eDistribution, you know that Alabama Graphics works to make your life easier.

The same is true for our eProcurement service.

Much like eDistribution, eProcurement is a service offered by Alabama Graphics to make it much easier for other companies or organizations to bid on your equipment or services that you need. We host a web portal for you where you can maintain current documents for suppliers and vendors interested in providing your product or service.  This is a great way to post all information needed for qualifying your vendors.

Alabama Graphics’ eDistribution: Make Your Life Easier

Bidding out projects can be such a pain, right?

Maintaining, organizing and sifting through project bids is a full-time job.  In these tough times, you don’t always have the manpower for it. Enter Alabama Graphics’ eDistribution!

eDistribution takes the administrative work out of bid management for you, and puts it right where it belongs – in the hands of a capable, knowledgeable commercial AEC partner – Alabama Graphics! 

On Her Toes for 31 Years

We’ve got a great team at Alabama Graphics – many people you may never get the pleasure of meeting even if you do business with us regularly. So we’d like to introduce you to Sandra Esco, Alabama Graphics Vice President of the Montgomery office.

Sandra’s duties at Alabama Graphics keep her on her toes. She’s responsible for managing employees, keeping up with inventory, doing purchasing, invoicing customers, handling collections for the Montgomery office and helping with customer service. She has a lot on her plate!

“I do a lot of things!” she says. “In a typical day, I may answer phones, assist customers who walk in (or call in)

So Many Hats! Sheila Caddell Wears Them All

At Alabama Graphics, we know that a business is more than just what it does – it’s who’s behind the scenes, working for you. We’d like to introduce you to Sheila Caddell, Alabama Graphics’ Vice President of Sales and Production.

Sheila will celebrate her 20^th anniversary with Alabama Graphics this year, so she knows a thing or two about how our business functions. “I’ve been heavily involved in production for many years, but recently, I’ve moved into managing our sales force as well,” she says.

Sheila is involved with a variety of tasks for clients. “I may quote a job directly, help problem-solve an equipment issue in production or work directly with a salesperson to provide a solution for their clients,” she says. “I wear a lot of hats.”

New Year brings New Goals to Alabama Graphics

A new year means new resolutions and new goals for Alabama Graphics.

Our two main resolutions for the New Year relate to our customers, both current and potential.

For starters, we’d like to thank our loyal clients who continue to depend on us to handle their work. We resolve to continue to improve our offerings and customer service!

The other area we’d like to work on in the New Year is letting everyone know exactly what we do so they will know we are here for them.  Many believe that we only work in the AEC industry, but this is not so! We also work in other industries like: churches, manufacturing, retail, development, schools, legal, and more.

In 2012 you will see more from Alabama Graphics, including some new services.  Stay tuned for more about these great new offerings.

Additionally, we will be expanding our color services, and providing more equipment offerings in both large and small format color, and only having the most highly skilled service technicians working for us and for you.

In keeping with our first resolution above to keep you more informed in the coming year about what we are doing, we’ll talk a bit about eCommunication.

We have had great success with eCommunication in 2011 and want to remind you all that we offer local support, not an “800” number. Additionally we have four CDT, CSI certified consultants on staff that understand the construction process.  With eCommunication we can help with faster project delivery by:

• keeping projects on track
• having unparalleled team communications
• saving overhead and simplifying security
• lending local expert support to a project based solution

We look forward to serving you in 2012.  To stay tuned in to our latest news, please like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and connect with us on LinkedIn.

Happy New Year to you all!

Embracing Holiday Traditions

The holidays are a wonderful time for embracing traditions. At Alabama Graphics, we’ve been talking a lot lately about each of our families’ traditions. All families are different, but we all have one thing in common – we enjoy the holidays and making them special! Since Christmas is only a few days away, we’d like to share a few of our holiday traditions with you.

Go caroling. It may sound a little hokey, but Christmas caroling reminds us of a simpler time. Grab the family and go to a few houses singing some of your favorite holiday songs. Or, if everyone tends to be a little tone deaf, carry your iPod and some speakers with you and go “makeshift”