Benson IMS: Living to Serve

If you ask anyone at Benson Integrated Marketing Solutions in Alpharetta, Georgia if they see the company as a print service provider, the answer is no.

But don’t be alarmed, it’s a good thing.

“We want our customers to understand that we're here to serve them, not just print for them,” says Jonathan Jackson, director of operations for Benson IMS.

Benson IMS has been around since 1992. When Brian Benson founded the company, it started as a small direct mail and print company that rapidly evolved into a full-service integrated marketing solutions company that offers everything from apparel to creative design services, on-demand communication technology, print services, promotional products, and signage.

In the early days, Jackson explains, Benson IMS was doing point-of-purchase displays for fast food restaurants, and then a door to a different market opened.

“Throughout the years, he (Benson) found a niche that he kind of fit with multi-family housing and he saw how his services could be applied to them, and he found that it was a passion of his,” Jackson says. “So today our clientele that's our main focus is multi-family housing in the United States.”

Exterior signage that Benson IMS completed for an apartment building | Credit: Benson IMS

Jackson explains that the marketing needs for multi-family housing include everything from apparel to name tags, doormats, promotional products, temporary signage, and permanent exterior signage.

“We very much value what we call the centralized marketing platform, meaning that we intend to be a service provider as well as a product provider for these organizations,” Jackson says. “Basically, for our customers, we want to help free up their time so that their marketing experts can focus on the marketing content itself rather than trying to find every single aspect of a marketing campaign. Instead, they can just come to us, and we will either produce or source whatever they need so that we are coordinating it.”

The Value of Being a One-Stop-Shop

Because Benson IMS keeps customer needs at the forefront, Jackson says that being a jack of all trades that can handle everything from flyers to t-shirts with expertise not only helps Benson stand out from the competition, but it also gives clients peace of mind.

An array of promotional products Benson IMS provides | Credit: Benson IMS

“When a customer knows that they can come to us, tell us what they need, and know that we’ll get it done and get it done well, it takes the pressure off of them and it makes them feel good. Ultimately, we want our clients to win, and being able to offer multiple services helps us achieve that,” Jackson says.

That is why Benson IMS doesn’t seek out the one-off, “I need 20,000 flyers printed” types of jobs, Jackson says. He explains that the company has spent years perfecting its model and continues to build and improve on workflows that increase the speed of output.

“Every year we get faster and faster to try and deliver customers products quicker and more accurately, but maintain a high-quality output,” Jackson says.

To improve its workflows and customer experience, Jackson says Benson IMS has implemented full web-to-print for most of its products so customers can get business cards and other items the same day an order is placed.

A Boom in Signage

Even though Benson IMS provides apparel, promo products, and so forth, Jackson says that of all segments over the past year, customer demand for wide-format signage has skyrocketed. To help keep up, the company decided to invest in an HP Latex 2700 – which was purchased at the 2023 PRINTING United Expo in Atlanta, Georgia. Benson IMS had already declared itself a fan of HP and already has several HP presses, so the move was sort of a no-brainer.

“Our temporary signage business, which would include all our yard signs, wall display signage, and vinyls, has just exploded over the last year. It beat our expectations last year by a good amount. So, we knew that we needed to increase our printing capacity,” Jackson says.

Jackson says he had his eye on the HP Latex 2700 at the 2022 PRINTING United Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada, but at the time he didn’t think the company had enough need for it. But lo and behold, by the Fall of 2023 the tune had changed, and HP was ready with open arms. In fact, Jackson says he is planning to purchase another one later this year.

HP Latex 2700 Credit: Benson IMS

Part of the reason for wanting another HP Latex machine is simply because turnaround times are getting quicker and quicker, and Jackson wants to make sure that Benson IMS’s turnaround times for wide-format are staying at 48 hours with future goals of 24-hour turnaround times.

“We're just getting that much work in that division of our company that we've got to get that coverage to help feed this speed-to-market mindset, where we want to get things out faster. I can't just say, ‘well, you'll get it in four days,’ because nowadays there’s competition out there that can do it in one day,” Jackson says.

As for what sparked the popularity in signage, Jackson admits he’s not exactly sure of the root cause, but his main concern is staying ahead of the curve because, at the end of the day, it all comes down to keeping clients happy.

“We don't want to fall behind, because to us, and again, and I'll stress this over and over – the customer is the most important thing,” Jackson says. “So, whatever we can do that would be the least interrupting thing to the customer that's the route we want to go, we’re always looking to see what will benefit the customer the most.”