Sep 13, 2005
Who’s Who in HVTO:
Frank Collins
CEO
New Media Technologies
Frank Collins started New Media Technologies 10 years ago with the goal of bringing together experts in document composition, print manipulation and mail system software. The company serves customers in the financial and insurance markets. The group utilizes a comprehensive suite of industry-leading systems and software, but are beholding to none, making them uniquely qualified to provide uncommon document systems expertise.
Prior to New Media, Collins was an executive project manager at Consolidated Edison of New York. He has 23 years experience in systems integration where he concentrated on high volume document processing and document management.
Biggest challenge
Being the head of a high-tech document systems integrator, however, has brought a new set of challenges for Collins.
“My biggest challenge is finding superior people,” says Collins. “There are a lot of people available today that have expertise in one particular area or a specific software that we support. Finding a truly qualified person, however, is often like finding a needle in a haystack. We find that a lot of people have experience, but it is often only surface experience doing maintenance or routine updates. We seek out professionals who get dirty under the hood of a methodology. We often do significant enhancements and modifications to bring to light the full potential of a particular product.”
Helping customers realize the full potential of technology investments is what New Media is all about.
“Companies often invest a ton of money into systems and technology only to fall short in terms of getting the full value out of those investments,” says Collins. “The challenge is finding people that not only have an in depth knowledge of the vast portfolio of software that we work with and support, but also a broad conceptual understanding of the business processes our customers are looking to improve.”
If you are not familiar with New Media Technologies, you should be. The company was on the forefront of the popular concept of the “automated document factory” and has put those methodologies into practice for several large-scale and widely known corporations. Perhaps the lack of recognition is due to the company’s decidedly low profile.
“We’ve never tooted our own horn,” says Collins “Our business has grown primarily on referral. Contrary to the marketing hype of some others in the industry, we deliver on the promise of technology, and word eventually gets out in the long run.”
Given this quiet but successful history, what does Collins believe are the current opportunities in the high volume transaction output (HVTO) industry?
“We find that the biggest opportunity is for organizations to conduct comprehensive process analysis,” says Collins. “Even without technology, we see our customers getting a lot of bang for their buck by improving and streamlining their processes before they even implement technology.”
According to Collins, organizations are well advised to thoroughly understand their processes in order to uncover and improve the gaps in the performance of that process. “That may, or may not, involve technology or services,” says Collins.
When process improvement does require technology, New Media is uniquely positioned to prescribe the right tools for their clients since they work with essentially all the packages that are prevalent in the industry today.
What advice does Collins give to those moving forward with a new system?
“Consider also the warts and downfalls of each product, not just the bells and whistles,” says Collins. “Your sales executive or service rep is not going to clue you in on the pitfalls when you buy a product. We factor the downside as well as the upside when setting up a solution for our clients.”