The shape of things to come

1996 really was a break-through year for Formara in terms of one particular contract and what it meant to our business.

Having worked with New Holland Tractors since 1971 (it was Ford Tractors back then), we had built a reputation for being flexible, producing quality products and accurate in everything we worked on. There were few more important contracts for Formara than the New Holland Service Bulletins print and distribution in terms of our future development.

Vital Information

Service Bulletins were posted directly to farmers who owned New Holland tractors to advise of upgrades, issues or refurbishments required to their model or models.Initially, we worked solely with the UK market and developed a database system for the farmer’s addresses and the models they owned, in English language only. We would bulk print the bulletins dependant on the model and then print address sheets which would indicate which models were required. Our team of finishers would then pick and pack the distribution on a weekly basis.

The database system led to us employing 2 full time programmers on future development. The system managed the authoring of bulletins, management of the technical drawings as well as the print production, addressing and dispatch.

Personalised Mailings to a Global Market

Formara and New Holland worked closely together to develop the database to include translation of bulletins into 8 different languages to facilitate distribution of the bulletins to a global market.

At this stage we were still running the operation as a pick and pack process but recommended to NH that with some investment in the database system we could create tailored mailings specific to each farmer. The mailings would be completed daily rather than weekly and include the models required in the language required.

This was ground-breaking and lead to massive cost savings for New Holland plus a significant reduction in waste at Formara. However, further development was still needed when New Holland and Case IH (a rival tractor manufacturer) merged and formed CNH. A wider variety of models with a larger customer base across the world meant more bulletins being distributed.

Multi-channel distribution

The advent of email meant that Formara were developing the Service Bulletins database yet again so that some recipients would receive paper copies while others would have theirs sent by email as a PDF attachment. Accuracy was never more important and regular testing was essential.

That was 1996 - now check out these services for today's market: